Happy Halloween everyone!
Truth be told, I'm really missing America today-- Halloween is my favorite holiday, not to mention the holiest of all days: Nick Saban's birthday [ROLL TIDE!]. There was a Halloween party here on campus last night that only succeeded in making me fully realize exactly what all I gave up to come to Egypt. Even if it is all just sweaty, debauched frat parties and copious amounts of booze, the American college experience is one hell of a fun time.
I have two midterms to study for tomorrow, but I decided to go to Maadi to pick up some boxes my mom sent to Dave and Amy's for me ages ago. Will and I took a bus to Maadi, then caught a cab to Dave and Amy's place. We picked up my boxes, popped in to a local expat market where we loaded up on snacks and Dr. Pepper, and caught a cab back to New Cairo, all of which went ridiculously smoothly and easy. The entire endeavor took less than two and a half hours--an amazing feat in a country where NOTHING happens quickly.
My boxes were full of goodies: 8 packs of Djarum Black clove cigarettes, Halloween candy, movies, clothes, newspaper clippings about Bama football and Megan Fox [my two favorite topics!], a Halloween card, and a copy of Where the Wild Things Are. It made me feel so much better on a day when I was really missing home- a care package from the world I left behind.
I promise I really will write on my Alex trip at some point, but I am pretty tired tonight and still have a lot of studying to do. Goodnight from Egypt, Happy Halloween!
What's in my Bag? Egypt Edition
There are few ways that enable you to understand what life is like somewhere better than examining the things you need for day-to-day life in that place.
So, without further ado, I present to you:
What's in My Bag?- Egypt Edition*
Bag: Red patterned elephant messenger bag, bought in Dahab for 50 L.E. [approx. 10 USD]
Contents:
-cell phone
-camera
-wallet
-in my wallet [yellow embossed camel skin leather from Morocco]:
Hard Rock Café Hurghada refreshing towelette
Doctor's note for missing class on Sunday
97 LE
Same Same But Different restaurant card from Dahab
Ahmed Adly, International Chess Grandmaster business card
AUC Senior Coordinator business card
UA Student ID
Alabama driver's license and military ID
International Student Identity Card [expired]
Jamie Lyons' business card [hahaha]
Ticket stub from Alabama vs. Clemson [08 season opener]
Mastercard
Ticket stub from Alexandria catacombs
Twenty 10-pound Mobinil phone credit cards
Picture of my nephew
Visa card
AUC Student ID
-passport
-notebook [I am constantly writing down little notes I want to remember to write about…my lack of updates wouldn't be telling of this but I swear it's true!]
-sunglasses..cuz it's freakin Egypt, man- It's sunny!
-iPod
-flashdrive
-2 AUC pens, one of which doesn't work
-Chapstick…cuz it's dry here
-bobby pins
-deodorant..because I sweat. A lot. It's the Middle East!
-bronzer
-56.70 LE and 3.46 USD in loose change
-random sea glass and coral from Dahab and Hurghada, respectively
-5 Ambien which spilled on a bus ride
-La Roka Café flier
Excerpt from flier: "we have the honor to invite you as we will organize the greater party in El Haram just as we blissful to presentation elevated favor and enjoying by captivated nature and enjoyment by dj tones with dj stars. This party at next Thursday and every Thursday and Friday at 9pm." Hilarious? Yes.
*for those of you who don't know, when bloggers are feeling lazy and don't feel like being introspective but need to post something, they list things. Hopefully this list was at least a tiny bit entertaining, and maybe even accomplished the goal, which was to give you insight into my life here in Al-Misr. No? Eh, you can't win 'em all.
So, without further ado, I present to you:
What's in My Bag?- Egypt Edition*
Bag: Red patterned elephant messenger bag, bought in Dahab for 50 L.E. [approx. 10 USD]
Contents:
-cell phone
-camera
-wallet
-in my wallet [yellow embossed camel skin leather from Morocco]:
Hard Rock Café Hurghada refreshing towelette
Doctor's note for missing class on Sunday
97 LE
Same Same But Different restaurant card from Dahab
Ahmed Adly, International Chess Grandmaster business card
AUC Senior Coordinator business card
UA Student ID
Alabama driver's license and military ID
International Student Identity Card [expired]
Jamie Lyons' business card [hahaha]
Ticket stub from Alabama vs. Clemson [08 season opener]
Mastercard
Ticket stub from Alexandria catacombs
Twenty 10-pound Mobinil phone credit cards
Picture of my nephew
Visa card
AUC Student ID
-passport
-notebook [I am constantly writing down little notes I want to remember to write about…my lack of updates wouldn't be telling of this but I swear it's true!]
-sunglasses..cuz it's freakin Egypt, man- It's sunny!
-iPod
-flashdrive
-2 AUC pens, one of which doesn't work
-Chapstick…cuz it's dry here
-bobby pins
-deodorant..because I sweat. A lot. It's the Middle East!
-bronzer
-56.70 LE and 3.46 USD in loose change
-random sea glass and coral from Dahab and Hurghada, respectively
-5 Ambien which spilled on a bus ride
-La Roka Café flier
Excerpt from flier: "we have the honor to invite you as we will organize the greater party in El Haram just as we blissful to presentation elevated favor and enjoying by captivated nature and enjoyment by dj tones with dj stars. This party at next Thursday and every Thursday and Friday at 9pm." Hilarious? Yes.
*for those of you who don't know, when bloggers are feeling lazy and don't feel like being introspective but need to post something, they list things. Hopefully this list was at least a tiny bit entertaining, and maybe even accomplished the goal, which was to give you insight into my life here in Al-Misr. No? Eh, you can't win 'em all.
This place is a prison.
Nighttime.
A girl sits alone in a dark, deserted courtyard, lips painted a dark rouge for no one in particular, wearing the same uniform of too-tight black pants and black shirt, last night's eyeliner smeared haphazardly around languid eyes, lazily puffing away on a cigarette, complacent, listless, agitated. The picture of indifference; she isn't going anywhere.
Some days these walls feel like a prison. The sky is gray and tyrannical, feels as if at any moment it might give up the hope of hanging on to the heavens and come crashing down on us all. The wooden lattices on the windows become bars, the sterile concrete buildings, with their sharp edges and straight facades my faceless oppressors.
A restless mood settles over me.
Some days the world is not quite big enough. Some days AUC is too damn small.
[Alexandria post coming soon.]
A girl sits alone in a dark, deserted courtyard, lips painted a dark rouge for no one in particular, wearing the same uniform of too-tight black pants and black shirt, last night's eyeliner smeared haphazardly around languid eyes, lazily puffing away on a cigarette, complacent, listless, agitated. The picture of indifference; she isn't going anywhere.
Some days these walls feel like a prison. The sky is gray and tyrannical, feels as if at any moment it might give up the hope of hanging on to the heavens and come crashing down on us all. The wooden lattices on the windows become bars, the sterile concrete buildings, with their sharp edges and straight facades my faceless oppressors.
A restless mood settles over me.
Some days the world is not quite big enough. Some days AUC is too damn small.
[Alexandria post coming soon.]
Down in Africa..
It's hard to believe that I've already been in Egypt longer than I was in Morocco. How different my experiences have been! I know I definitely feel like my learning has been delayed, both culturally and academically. I have yet to get up close and personal with the pyramids or the Sphinx, though I've ridden Arabian stallions alongside them at sunrise, and I haven't travelled to see the obelisks, the Valley of the Kings, or even made it to the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square yet. A large part of that is because I don't technically live in Cairo. I live in the middle of a desert outside of Cairo, in a wasteland called New Cairo, which, in five years, will be just as bustling as Zamalek, Tahrir, Maadi, and the Heliopolis, but for now is filled with the skeletons of houses yet to be completed and a whole lot of sand. Then there is the shimmering oasis that is the AUC compound, safely tucked away in the middle of nowhere, in a suburb of New Cairo called Katameya, a virtual Shangri La barricaded behind walls and fences, kept completely unto itself.
I've been meaning to describe AUC in depth for some time now, but it is really pretty difficult to put into words the feat of engineering and hubris that is New Campus. I have likened it more than once to a resort, not a university. First of all, it rises out of the desert sand, looming like a small city in the vast emptiness. Once inside the compound –after clearing multiple checkpoints, mind you- the concrete assaults your senses, which realize that here is a huge concrete and marble structure, built on sand, in a place where no structure at all has any business being built.
One main walkway courses through the campus, flanked on either side by looming, architecturally avant garde office buildings and classrooms. Bisecting this walkway are various fountains, man-made rivers, and burbling geysers. The fountains are innumerable on campus, wasting water left and right, but I have to admit that on days when the fountains aren't on or aren't working, the heat is oppressive and the campus just feels so unbearably, unnaturally dry. The walkway is jagged cobblestone lined with slick –too slick- marble, proof that the government was literally desperate to spend money on things as senseless as marble sidewalks.
The buildings are labyrinthine in design; there's a trick to understanding how they're laid out, and once you get it, it's not completely impossible to get to class on time…but these things take time and diligent study. There are balconies and terraces everywhere. The thing that is amazing is the way the design of the buildings brings the outside in. Many times I have been walking down a hallway, looked up, and realized there was no roof…I was technically outside, in a school building. There are random fountains and courtyards scattered throughout every building, and this has a very calming effect, which is necessary in dealing with the bureaucracy which runs AUC. The indoors and outdoors are integrated seamlessly, giving this monstrous marvel of architectural engineering an almost..organic feel. I didn’t even know that was possible.
The "quad" is a huge concrete courtyard filled with fountains and lined with food kiosks and classrooms. There are shady umbrellas and leisurely looking wickers chairs scattered everywhere, and several smaller, sunken courtyards with fountain moats surrounding them, with small concrete bridges connecting them to the larger quad area. There are also several staircases which lead to nowhere, placed in the quad just to serve as a sitting structure—we do leisure very well in Egypt.
Now there are definitely difficulties that come with building a compound in the middle of the desert, as my friend Becky was so apt to point out. The water is fickle- sometimes there is none. When there is water, it's rarely hot. Sometime's the toilets don't flush. You can't flush toilet paper, or they overflow. There are no power lines out here, so the whole operation is powered by generators, which go out frequently. Yesterday at 3:30pm the electricity went out and didn't come back on until around 9pm, plunging the school into four hours of darkness after the sun set at 5, leaving everyone in a frenzy of terror and excitement, and causing an overload in buses due to the mass exodus from the campus into Cairo.
Naturally in our little oasis we are cut off from "real life" in Egypt. This is frustrating for me on many levels, because I was looking forward to trying to assimilate into Egyptian culture. Living on campus exacerbates this problem. But I'm adjusting to my new reality. I'm adjusting to spoiled, immature, elitist Egyptian kids fresh out of high school interrupting teachers and speaking during lecture. I'm learning to control my anger at seeing water wasted unscrupulously. I'm even learning to forgive closed-minded statements about the place of women in society which literally set women's rights back hundreds of years. It is the strange day-to-day existence on the compound which gives me my only semblance of reality and stability, but also daily amazes me with its grandiosity and unnecessary amenities. Such is life in the Middle East, eh?
I'm going to Alexandria this weekend [insha'allah] so a good post is coming soon, promise!
Also, I'm on the AUC fencing team. I told you life is ridiculous here.
Take care, I miss you all!
I've been meaning to describe AUC in depth for some time now, but it is really pretty difficult to put into words the feat of engineering and hubris that is New Campus. I have likened it more than once to a resort, not a university. First of all, it rises out of the desert sand, looming like a small city in the vast emptiness. Once inside the compound –after clearing multiple checkpoints, mind you- the concrete assaults your senses, which realize that here is a huge concrete and marble structure, built on sand, in a place where no structure at all has any business being built.
One main walkway courses through the campus, flanked on either side by looming, architecturally avant garde office buildings and classrooms. Bisecting this walkway are various fountains, man-made rivers, and burbling geysers. The fountains are innumerable on campus, wasting water left and right, but I have to admit that on days when the fountains aren't on or aren't working, the heat is oppressive and the campus just feels so unbearably, unnaturally dry. The walkway is jagged cobblestone lined with slick –too slick- marble, proof that the government was literally desperate to spend money on things as senseless as marble sidewalks.
The buildings are labyrinthine in design; there's a trick to understanding how they're laid out, and once you get it, it's not completely impossible to get to class on time…but these things take time and diligent study. There are balconies and terraces everywhere. The thing that is amazing is the way the design of the buildings brings the outside in. Many times I have been walking down a hallway, looked up, and realized there was no roof…I was technically outside, in a school building. There are random fountains and courtyards scattered throughout every building, and this has a very calming effect, which is necessary in dealing with the bureaucracy which runs AUC. The indoors and outdoors are integrated seamlessly, giving this monstrous marvel of architectural engineering an almost..organic feel. I didn’t even know that was possible.
The "quad" is a huge concrete courtyard filled with fountains and lined with food kiosks and classrooms. There are shady umbrellas and leisurely looking wickers chairs scattered everywhere, and several smaller, sunken courtyards with fountain moats surrounding them, with small concrete bridges connecting them to the larger quad area. There are also several staircases which lead to nowhere, placed in the quad just to serve as a sitting structure—we do leisure very well in Egypt.
Now there are definitely difficulties that come with building a compound in the middle of the desert, as my friend Becky was so apt to point out. The water is fickle- sometimes there is none. When there is water, it's rarely hot. Sometime's the toilets don't flush. You can't flush toilet paper, or they overflow. There are no power lines out here, so the whole operation is powered by generators, which go out frequently. Yesterday at 3:30pm the electricity went out and didn't come back on until around 9pm, plunging the school into four hours of darkness after the sun set at 5, leaving everyone in a frenzy of terror and excitement, and causing an overload in buses due to the mass exodus from the campus into Cairo.
Naturally in our little oasis we are cut off from "real life" in Egypt. This is frustrating for me on many levels, because I was looking forward to trying to assimilate into Egyptian culture. Living on campus exacerbates this problem. But I'm adjusting to my new reality. I'm adjusting to spoiled, immature, elitist Egyptian kids fresh out of high school interrupting teachers and speaking during lecture. I'm learning to control my anger at seeing water wasted unscrupulously. I'm even learning to forgive closed-minded statements about the place of women in society which literally set women's rights back hundreds of years. It is the strange day-to-day existence on the compound which gives me my only semblance of reality and stability, but also daily amazes me with its grandiosity and unnecessary amenities. Such is life in the Middle East, eh?
I'm going to Alexandria this weekend [insha'allah] so a good post is coming soon, promise!
Also, I'm on the AUC fencing team. I told you life is ridiculous here.
Take care, I miss you all!
My heart is beeping
The desert is a terribly dirty place for feet.
My feet will never be clean again.
I am so lucky.
My feet will never be clean again.
I am so lucky.
Swine Flu Break '09: Hurghada, Dahab, and some actual Swine Flu
Wow, I have so much catching up to do!!!
After 8 days of classes here at AUC, the Egyptian government cancelled school for two and half weeks due to the imminent Swine Flu threat here in Egypt. This, of course, sent waves of excitement through campus and within a few hours of the announcement the entire campus had cleared out. So the Group all went their separate ways on adventures around the Middle East, and Goose, Katie, Dana, Dooler, Sherief and I hopped on a bus for a seven hour ride to Hurghada on the Red Sea. Hurghada is a tiny little town full of incredibly annoying Russian tourists. However, we had a hotel with a beautiful view of the Red Sea, and we quickly made friends with the owner of the bar there, Lotfy. The first day there we took it easy and napped, hung out in the ocean, and ate delicious calamari tagine and seafood soup. That night, we tossed back more than a few drinks with Lotfy, who decided he liked my boyfriend [yes, boyfriend, Goose and I are officially dating and have been for nearly a month…really, who is surprised? No one? Figured.] so much that we wanted him to work there. So Goose spent the rest of the night mixing Long Island Ice Teas and hooking us up with free special shisha. The next morning, we all got up and jumped into the back of a mini van which drove us deep into the desert, bouncing over the dunes violently. We climbed a mountain, where I got third degree burns on my feet from the scorching sand, and then arrived at a little camp where we had a fun-filled day of just about everything. In a five hour period I rode a camel, donkey, horse, dune buggy, ATV, giant tortoise, and held chameleons, venomous snakes, goats, turtles and crocodiles, kissed a camel, played with ostriches, got really dirty, and all around had a great time. After that we went to a Fire Party where we ate delicious food, watched belly-dancers, and marveled as Goose was pulled up onto the stage by "The Devil" and made to swallow [or attempt to swallow] a sword. Good news: his gag reflex is alive and well.
Finally, we watched the sun set from the top of a mountain, saw Jupiter through a telescope, took our van out to a deserted patch of sand, and laid there looking at the stars. Lying in the sand with my new friends/family, I couldn’t help but think of Morocco and my ISA friends, and I couldn’t help but think of how different my life here is than I imagined it would be. I love it, but it's not what I was expecting.
Then we set off through the desert again, cranking Backstreet Boys tunes the entire way. We arrived back at the hotel where Lotfy greeted us with Egyptian beer, and happily passed out.
The next day we committed the entire day to eating delicious food and lounging on the beach. That night, we had a fake and very drunken birthday party for Sherief aka Alfastar in Hard Rock Café Hurghada, where we gorged ourselves on American food and expensive cocktails [have I mentioned I love being able to legally buy alcohol? I've only been carded once. Ohebu al-Misr!] Then we somehow found our way back to the hotel, where we drank even more and smoked Lotfy's delicious, free shisha.
The next morning we all unhappily piled into a bus at 8am, me still wearing my makeup from the night before and chugging water to cure my hangover. An hour later we were boarding a yacht and laying out on the deck, overlooking water so clear and blue you could see fifty feet down to the coral below. We spent the day lounging on the boat, swimming in the water, discovering strange aquatic life [including a slug/crab creature with one scary arm ending in a hook which lived in an innocent looking shell..it was terrifying], watching Sherief try and fight Goose, and jumping thirty feet from the top of the yacht into the clear turquoise water below. That night we took a bus back from Hurghada, and jumped on a taxi back to campus, which promptly got a flat tire right in front of a military post. The guards, needless to say, were not thrilled, suspecting us to be American terrorists. However, upon meeting Katie, the flirt of the group, they were charmed and brought us water to quench our thirst as we waited for nearly an hour for our tire to be repaired. We spent the next few days recuperating in Cairo, where I unfortunately came down with the Piggy Flu.
After being nursed back to health by my amazing friends and incredible boyfriend, Katie, Anna, Goose and I took a nine hour bus ride to Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula [which was made longer due to the fact that the bus blew a tire around 3 am]. We arrived, checked into Dolphin Camp, where we stayed in bamboo beach bungalows with a view of the water, and Saudi Arabia across it, and had a delicious breakfast at Dolphin Café. We spent the rest of the day basking in the sun on our private beach, and enjoyed incredible food, shisha, beer, free rum, and great company all night. The next day we set out to go swimming and ended up lounging on an abandoned beach called Lagouna, and ate more delicious food. We ended up at a bar called Yalla run by Australian expats around our age, where we got thoroughly drunk. Our last day was filled with lots of shopping and haggling, some bus confusion, and finally an hour bus ride to Sharm el Sheikh, and a six hour ride from there to Nasr City, where we hailed a cab which took us to the wrong AUC campus, ended up eating a 5am dinner at McDonalds, and waited two hours for an AUC bus to arrive to take us back to campus. It was an adventure, to say the least. I realize my account from Dahab is sort of lacking, but we didn't do much. We just relaxed and enjoyed the atmosphere, the food, and each other. Dahab is a lot less touristy than other towns on the Sinai, and is a huge hippie town filled with expats and long-haired, shirtless backpackers. Needless to say, Goose and I fit in well and loved it there. There were rumors circulating the entire time that AUC was not going to reopen this semester, and the four of us seriously considered renting a $100/month, one bedroom apartment and getting part-time jobs at a bar there. One of my new life goals is to retire there after I'm done gallivanting, open a bar, smoke lots of shisha, drink lots of beer, and bask in the awesomeness.
Now the entire Group has been reunited in Cairo, and classes resume tomorrow [supposedly]. In light of this fact, I am off to get some homework done for my 8:30 tomorrow. I will be updating this blog more regularly now that I'm firmly back in Cairo for a while. Check out my pictures on Facebook!
Salaam wa hubb,
Danielle
After 8 days of classes here at AUC, the Egyptian government cancelled school for two and half weeks due to the imminent Swine Flu threat here in Egypt. This, of course, sent waves of excitement through campus and within a few hours of the announcement the entire campus had cleared out. So the Group all went their separate ways on adventures around the Middle East, and Goose, Katie, Dana, Dooler, Sherief and I hopped on a bus for a seven hour ride to Hurghada on the Red Sea. Hurghada is a tiny little town full of incredibly annoying Russian tourists. However, we had a hotel with a beautiful view of the Red Sea, and we quickly made friends with the owner of the bar there, Lotfy. The first day there we took it easy and napped, hung out in the ocean, and ate delicious calamari tagine and seafood soup. That night, we tossed back more than a few drinks with Lotfy, who decided he liked my boyfriend [yes, boyfriend, Goose and I are officially dating and have been for nearly a month…really, who is surprised? No one? Figured.] so much that we wanted him to work there. So Goose spent the rest of the night mixing Long Island Ice Teas and hooking us up with free special shisha. The next morning, we all got up and jumped into the back of a mini van which drove us deep into the desert, bouncing over the dunes violently. We climbed a mountain, where I got third degree burns on my feet from the scorching sand, and then arrived at a little camp where we had a fun-filled day of just about everything. In a five hour period I rode a camel, donkey, horse, dune buggy, ATV, giant tortoise, and held chameleons, venomous snakes, goats, turtles and crocodiles, kissed a camel, played with ostriches, got really dirty, and all around had a great time. After that we went to a Fire Party where we ate delicious food, watched belly-dancers, and marveled as Goose was pulled up onto the stage by "The Devil" and made to swallow [or attempt to swallow] a sword. Good news: his gag reflex is alive and well.
Finally, we watched the sun set from the top of a mountain, saw Jupiter through a telescope, took our van out to a deserted patch of sand, and laid there looking at the stars. Lying in the sand with my new friends/family, I couldn’t help but think of Morocco and my ISA friends, and I couldn’t help but think of how different my life here is than I imagined it would be. I love it, but it's not what I was expecting.
Then we set off through the desert again, cranking Backstreet Boys tunes the entire way. We arrived back at the hotel where Lotfy greeted us with Egyptian beer, and happily passed out.
The next day we committed the entire day to eating delicious food and lounging on the beach. That night, we had a fake and very drunken birthday party for Sherief aka Alfastar in Hard Rock Café Hurghada, where we gorged ourselves on American food and expensive cocktails [have I mentioned I love being able to legally buy alcohol? I've only been carded once. Ohebu al-Misr!] Then we somehow found our way back to the hotel, where we drank even more and smoked Lotfy's delicious, free shisha.
The next morning we all unhappily piled into a bus at 8am, me still wearing my makeup from the night before and chugging water to cure my hangover. An hour later we were boarding a yacht and laying out on the deck, overlooking water so clear and blue you could see fifty feet down to the coral below. We spent the day lounging on the boat, swimming in the water, discovering strange aquatic life [including a slug/crab creature with one scary arm ending in a hook which lived in an innocent looking shell..it was terrifying], watching Sherief try and fight Goose, and jumping thirty feet from the top of the yacht into the clear turquoise water below. That night we took a bus back from Hurghada, and jumped on a taxi back to campus, which promptly got a flat tire right in front of a military post. The guards, needless to say, were not thrilled, suspecting us to be American terrorists. However, upon meeting Katie, the flirt of the group, they were charmed and brought us water to quench our thirst as we waited for nearly an hour for our tire to be repaired. We spent the next few days recuperating in Cairo, where I unfortunately came down with the Piggy Flu.
After being nursed back to health by my amazing friends and incredible boyfriend, Katie, Anna, Goose and I took a nine hour bus ride to Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula [which was made longer due to the fact that the bus blew a tire around 3 am]. We arrived, checked into Dolphin Camp, where we stayed in bamboo beach bungalows with a view of the water, and Saudi Arabia across it, and had a delicious breakfast at Dolphin Café. We spent the rest of the day basking in the sun on our private beach, and enjoyed incredible food, shisha, beer, free rum, and great company all night. The next day we set out to go swimming and ended up lounging on an abandoned beach called Lagouna, and ate more delicious food. We ended up at a bar called Yalla run by Australian expats around our age, where we got thoroughly drunk. Our last day was filled with lots of shopping and haggling, some bus confusion, and finally an hour bus ride to Sharm el Sheikh, and a six hour ride from there to Nasr City, where we hailed a cab which took us to the wrong AUC campus, ended up eating a 5am dinner at McDonalds, and waited two hours for an AUC bus to arrive to take us back to campus. It was an adventure, to say the least. I realize my account from Dahab is sort of lacking, but we didn't do much. We just relaxed and enjoyed the atmosphere, the food, and each other. Dahab is a lot less touristy than other towns on the Sinai, and is a huge hippie town filled with expats and long-haired, shirtless backpackers. Needless to say, Goose and I fit in well and loved it there. There were rumors circulating the entire time that AUC was not going to reopen this semester, and the four of us seriously considered renting a $100/month, one bedroom apartment and getting part-time jobs at a bar there. One of my new life goals is to retire there after I'm done gallivanting, open a bar, smoke lots of shisha, drink lots of beer, and bask in the awesomeness.
Now the entire Group has been reunited in Cairo, and classes resume tomorrow [supposedly]. In light of this fact, I am off to get some homework done for my 8:30 tomorrow. I will be updating this blog more regularly now that I'm firmly back in Cairo for a while. Check out my pictures on Facebook!
Salaam wa hubb,
Danielle
I've got some 'splaining to do
A brief explanation as to why I havent been/ won't be posting for a while:
After a mere seven days of class, the school was buzzing yesterday about exactly how long we would have off for Eid; the previously accepted time was 6 days, starting Friday. Around noon, there was a visible change in the atmosphere here at AUC as everyone ran around screaming and hugging. Turns out, the Egyptian government cancelled all schools and universities until October 3 [at the earliest] due to Eid and the onset of swine flu here. So, I'm off to Hurghada, a small beach town on the Red Sea, until Monday, and then probably heading to Israel and Jordan with my boyfriend [yea...so much for not letting things get out of hand with Goose, right? Who's surprised?] where we will meet up with the two Chris's.
Don't miss me too badly, and be looking forward to regular posting and lots of adventurous stories when I get back!
After a mere seven days of class, the school was buzzing yesterday about exactly how long we would have off for Eid; the previously accepted time was 6 days, starting Friday. Around noon, there was a visible change in the atmosphere here at AUC as everyone ran around screaming and hugging. Turns out, the Egyptian government cancelled all schools and universities until October 3 [at the earliest] due to Eid and the onset of swine flu here. So, I'm off to Hurghada, a small beach town on the Red Sea, until Monday, and then probably heading to Israel and Jordan with my boyfriend [yea...so much for not letting things get out of hand with Goose, right? Who's surprised?] where we will meet up with the two Chris's.
Don't miss me too badly, and be looking forward to regular posting and lots of adventurous stories when I get back!
Port Said: The Politically Correct Version
I cannot write anything here that happened in Port Said.
All I will say is that the city kinda sucks, but I had a fantastic time with my friends, all of whom I love more than ever.
Sorry, kids.
All I will say is that the city kinda sucks, but I had a fantastic time with my friends, all of whom I love more than ever.
Sorry, kids.
Lessons learned thus far in Al-Misr
- The security guards at AUC do not like Capture the Flag. They do not want us to like capture the flag. Especially not after midnight. Especially not during class. Especially not on their sandscaping.
- Doritos are about as expensive as a weekend on the Mediterranean.
- Shisha is a universal cure-all.
- So are good friends.
- You cannot walk more than 50 feet at AUC without running into one of these good friends.
- It is possible to take a walk of shame at 6am without having shacked anywhere.
- Alabama football is nearly as important as air.
- Sleep is not nearly as important as I had originally thought. Neigh, it is possible to function daily on three hours of sleep.
- Egyptian Arabic is wack.
- Keeping your cheeks clenched constantly is the only way to prevent tap-water-induced accidents.
- Dramaderies are terrifying, as are Arabian stallions. But nothing will make you as happy as galloping through the desert on one as the sun rises over the pyramids.
- Piastres are the biggest waste of paper ever. In the history of the world.
- Skype is life.
- Ten completely different people can become family in less than two weeks.
- Foosball is a national pasttime here.
- 8:30am classes are not as bad as I feared.
- A "short trip" to the city will always last at least seven hours.
- Ramadan rocks.
- The HUSS building makes no sense. At all. It's a sick joke.
- You can waste all the water you want here. You want 50 fountains on campus? No problem. You wanna take an hour long shower? Go ahead. Water the sand? You got it boss. Let the faucet run all night? Stop worrying. Really, it's not like the Middle East is in a water crisis or anything.
...more to come, I'm sure.
Did that really just happen?
Sept 3 2009
I ask myself that question a lot here. The past two days have been completely ridiculous. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a not so good way. The one thing I can say about life here is that it's exciting. Most people say exciting and it always has a positive connotation, but bad things can be exciting too. And really, as long as it's exciting, whether in a positive or negative way, at least things aren't boring.
On Tuesday I slept in all day because exhaustion finally caught up with me. I was still lounging around in my room when Chris called me and announced we were all getting on a bus in a half hour to go to Tahrir Square. I took the world's fastest shower and got ready in record time. At 4pm, Chris, Chris, Goose, Katie, Becky, Anna, Nate, Zach, Frankie and I got on the bus and settled in for a 45-minute drive. About five minutes into the ride, the bus driver put on his hazard lights, got out of his seat, walked back to a seat in the middle of the bus, and appeared to settle in for a nap. We were all completely dumbfounded. No one else on the bus seemed to think this was out of the ordinary. We were in the backseat discussing the perks of a job where you could randomly decide to nap anytime and still get paid when it dawned on us that he had been praying. We still have so much to learn. After a few minutes, he got up and we were on our way again. What a strange, wonderful place where you can take a few minutes out of your job and practice your beliefs without offending anyone. Wasn’t that the idea behind America in the first place?
We got off of the bus in Tahrir Square by the old AUC campus and wandered around for a while. We wandered into a papyrus shop that had lots of essential oils for all kinds of ailments. They had the best names: "Nervous Colon", "Sexual Weakness", etc. This created the perfect setup for one of my favorite exchanges of all time.
Goose: Chris, you probably need to buy some Sexual Weakness oil, don't you think?
Chris: No, that's ok, I produce my own.
I also had a first shortly thereafter. I was dressed very conservatively since it's Ramadan- loose fitting jeans and a loose long sleeve tunic top. As Katie and I were walking side my side, an old woman in a full abaya/hijab lunged at me and made a hissing noise. For a few moments I was completely dumbstruck, then horrified, wondering if she had actually spit on me. Luckily, she hadn't. But regardless, I was shocked. The only thing more that I could have done to be respectful would have been to wear a headscarf- and there were definitely girls in our group showing a lot more skin than I was. That's the first time ANYTHING like that has happened to me, in Morocco or Egypt, but I'm sure it won't be the last.
Next we met up with Ahmed and Sharif, the chess grandmaster and his friend from the other night. They took us to Felfel for a snack before a night of fun. I got shewarma, and it was delicious. Then we walked down to the Nile where we boarded a feluka boat covered in flashing neon lights blasting dance music. The ten of us rocked out to 50 Cent as we cruised down the Nile, unable to believe our lives.
Next Ahmed took us to a little shisha bar he goes to a lot, a humble little place in an alleyway. I was starting to get tired and thought maybe I wouldn’t make it through the night, so I tried to go easy on the shisha and guzzle some water, especially since Ahmed kept saying we had a long walk ahead of us. When we finished there, we set off for Hussein, a historic part of Cairo. At first we just meandered through streets and darted across traffic, but the next thing I knew we were walking across a high-rise bridge- four lanes, no sidewalk. We hugged the guard rail and walked nearly a mile and a half with cars whizzing by us less than six inches away. I have never concentrated on walking a straight line so hard in my life.
When we finally got off the bridge Ahmed and Sharif took us on a walking tour of historical mosques in Hussein, some of the oldest in Egypt, and all famous for various reasons. In the moonlight, lit by the neon glow of Cairo, it was so eerily beautiful that I was breathless.
As we wandered through the souk [market] looking at hookahs and jewelry, we finally started getting some catcalls, which have been few and far between here, and so very different from Morocco. I think the compliment of my life came from a vendor I passed: "You look like Spice Girl! Spicey spicey!"
We randomly stopped in a little café about the size of a storage unit where there was traditional Egyptian singing going on. We sat down, smoked some excellent shisha, and listened, enraptured, as the woman sang. The dj/announcer thanked us over and over again for coming, and even had us write down our names in Arabic so he could read them out loud and thank us again, along with Mr. President Obama.
Finally, around 12am, we stopped in at a restaurant where we had a private upstairs room and feasted on all kinds of things I don’t remember the names of, except for baba ganoush, which I'm pleased to say tastes as good as it sounds. We caught the 2am bus home, swearing no night could ever be better. Little did we know that two nights later we would have a night to rival any we had had so far.
The next day I slept in all day, and didn’t get anything I needed to accomplished. That night, we went out with Ahmed and Sherief again. First we broke the fast at a restaurant he knew and ate delicious food. Then, Ahmed showed us his driving skills, which consisted of nearly killing us and any nearby pedestrians over and over by squeezing mere inches between cars, weaving through traffic, and doing doughnuts feet away from small children. After we had regained control of our bladders, he took Katie, Goose, Frankie, Dooler and I to a café where we smoked excellent shisha [are you noticing a theme here?] and Katie sang karaoke. After that, we went to City Stars, did some shopping, and came home.
The next night was our Bedouin Night: Extreme Grandmaster Version. At 9pm we met Ahmed, Sherief, and their friend who has a bus in Zamalek. We drove an hour into the desert, and the first moment that I saw a giant triangular shadow on the horizon, a pyramid, will forever be engrained in my memory. I think that was the first moment it really sank in that I'm living in Egypt for the next 3 years. We were distracted from the pyramids by neon lights in the distance. We pulled up to a crowded outdoor club- no roof, no floor, just sand and stars and thatch huts and low tables and carpets on the ground. It was breathtaking. We settled in on our cushions in the very front of the club, closest to the makeshift stage, when someone gasped. We all looked around….and there was a man holding a lion. A lion cub, to be exact. He came over and let us all hold it and take pictures with it. Cuddling with a lion cub in the shadow of the pyramids has got to be the coolest thing I had ever done up until that point. From that point, we ate delicious food, danced to American music, limbo-ed, watched Oriental dancing, and Katie did karaoke. We danced our asses off, generally acting like idiots.
Goose and I have been joking around for the past few days about getting married, and I gave him a ring to surprise me with at some point. The plan was to do something really embarrassing when I least expected it. As we were getting ready to leave the club around 4:30am, Goose decided he wanted to dance. I couldn’t figure out why he wanted to dance so badly, because I was tired. He finally pulled me up on stage, and we were the only ones up there. Embarrassed, I looked at him and said, "well, go ahead, you're the one who wanted to dance so badly." At this point, he got down on one knee, pulled out the ring, and "proposed". Unfortunately, none of our friends saw, but about fifty Egyptians got up and clapped and congratulated us, thinking it was a real engagement. I was thoroughly embarrassed, but now we refer to ourselves as fiancées and most of the people we've met since then think we actually are.
After that, as the sun was coming up, I got on a dramadery [a two-hump camel] that was wayyyy higher than the camels I'm used to from Morocco and very scary. We rode out into the desert and had tea in the shadow of the pyramids, and then built a human pyramid in front of them. After that, I traded in my camel for an Arabian stallion and galloped full-speed back to the club, which was simultaneously the scariest and most exhilarating ten minutes of my life—riding through the desert beside the pyramids nearly bareback on a stallion. It was incredible. We took the long busride back to campus, and we all slept all day.
We stayed up all that night playing a game in the common room, and the next day I finally got to register for my classes.
Last night Goose and I stayed up watching text updates from the Alabama game – ROLL TIDE! We won, and it made me miss home and football so much, but I do love it here and I know that this is where I'm supposed to be.
Goose and I are slowly turning into a real couple…I suppose joking about it enough will do that. It's strange. I adore him. He is by far the funniest person I've ever met and he makes me laugh constantly. He's also the most caring, genuine, earnest person I know here, and I know he cares about me a lot already, I just don’t know that I want anything "official" or serious right now, so I have to figure out a way to keep my distance somehow.
I finally got to bed at 4am, and woke up at 7:20 to get ready for my 8:30 Arabic class. Intermediate Arabic at 8:30am after only a few hours of sleep kicked my ass, so I'm gonna have to start getting more sleep.
Now I'm off to Science and Tech of Ancient Egypt, my science class. Sorry this entry was so long…it took DAYS to write. I'll start keeping up better, promise. Miss you all!
I ask myself that question a lot here. The past two days have been completely ridiculous. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a not so good way. The one thing I can say about life here is that it's exciting. Most people say exciting and it always has a positive connotation, but bad things can be exciting too. And really, as long as it's exciting, whether in a positive or negative way, at least things aren't boring.
On Tuesday I slept in all day because exhaustion finally caught up with me. I was still lounging around in my room when Chris called me and announced we were all getting on a bus in a half hour to go to Tahrir Square. I took the world's fastest shower and got ready in record time. At 4pm, Chris, Chris, Goose, Katie, Becky, Anna, Nate, Zach, Frankie and I got on the bus and settled in for a 45-minute drive. About five minutes into the ride, the bus driver put on his hazard lights, got out of his seat, walked back to a seat in the middle of the bus, and appeared to settle in for a nap. We were all completely dumbfounded. No one else on the bus seemed to think this was out of the ordinary. We were in the backseat discussing the perks of a job where you could randomly decide to nap anytime and still get paid when it dawned on us that he had been praying. We still have so much to learn. After a few minutes, he got up and we were on our way again. What a strange, wonderful place where you can take a few minutes out of your job and practice your beliefs without offending anyone. Wasn’t that the idea behind America in the first place?
We got off of the bus in Tahrir Square by the old AUC campus and wandered around for a while. We wandered into a papyrus shop that had lots of essential oils for all kinds of ailments. They had the best names: "Nervous Colon", "Sexual Weakness", etc. This created the perfect setup for one of my favorite exchanges of all time.
Goose: Chris, you probably need to buy some Sexual Weakness oil, don't you think?
Chris: No, that's ok, I produce my own.
I also had a first shortly thereafter. I was dressed very conservatively since it's Ramadan- loose fitting jeans and a loose long sleeve tunic top. As Katie and I were walking side my side, an old woman in a full abaya/hijab lunged at me and made a hissing noise. For a few moments I was completely dumbstruck, then horrified, wondering if she had actually spit on me. Luckily, she hadn't. But regardless, I was shocked. The only thing more that I could have done to be respectful would have been to wear a headscarf- and there were definitely girls in our group showing a lot more skin than I was. That's the first time ANYTHING like that has happened to me, in Morocco or Egypt, but I'm sure it won't be the last.
Next we met up with Ahmed and Sharif, the chess grandmaster and his friend from the other night. They took us to Felfel for a snack before a night of fun. I got shewarma, and it was delicious. Then we walked down to the Nile where we boarded a feluka boat covered in flashing neon lights blasting dance music. The ten of us rocked out to 50 Cent as we cruised down the Nile, unable to believe our lives.
Next Ahmed took us to a little shisha bar he goes to a lot, a humble little place in an alleyway. I was starting to get tired and thought maybe I wouldn’t make it through the night, so I tried to go easy on the shisha and guzzle some water, especially since Ahmed kept saying we had a long walk ahead of us. When we finished there, we set off for Hussein, a historic part of Cairo. At first we just meandered through streets and darted across traffic, but the next thing I knew we were walking across a high-rise bridge- four lanes, no sidewalk. We hugged the guard rail and walked nearly a mile and a half with cars whizzing by us less than six inches away. I have never concentrated on walking a straight line so hard in my life.
When we finally got off the bridge Ahmed and Sharif took us on a walking tour of historical mosques in Hussein, some of the oldest in Egypt, and all famous for various reasons. In the moonlight, lit by the neon glow of Cairo, it was so eerily beautiful that I was breathless.
As we wandered through the souk [market] looking at hookahs and jewelry, we finally started getting some catcalls, which have been few and far between here, and so very different from Morocco. I think the compliment of my life came from a vendor I passed: "You look like Spice Girl! Spicey spicey!"
We randomly stopped in a little café about the size of a storage unit where there was traditional Egyptian singing going on. We sat down, smoked some excellent shisha, and listened, enraptured, as the woman sang. The dj/announcer thanked us over and over again for coming, and even had us write down our names in Arabic so he could read them out loud and thank us again, along with Mr. President Obama.
Finally, around 12am, we stopped in at a restaurant where we had a private upstairs room and feasted on all kinds of things I don’t remember the names of, except for baba ganoush, which I'm pleased to say tastes as good as it sounds. We caught the 2am bus home, swearing no night could ever be better. Little did we know that two nights later we would have a night to rival any we had had so far.
The next day I slept in all day, and didn’t get anything I needed to accomplished. That night, we went out with Ahmed and Sherief again. First we broke the fast at a restaurant he knew and ate delicious food. Then, Ahmed showed us his driving skills, which consisted of nearly killing us and any nearby pedestrians over and over by squeezing mere inches between cars, weaving through traffic, and doing doughnuts feet away from small children. After we had regained control of our bladders, he took Katie, Goose, Frankie, Dooler and I to a café where we smoked excellent shisha [are you noticing a theme here?] and Katie sang karaoke. After that, we went to City Stars, did some shopping, and came home.
The next night was our Bedouin Night: Extreme Grandmaster Version. At 9pm we met Ahmed, Sherief, and their friend who has a bus in Zamalek. We drove an hour into the desert, and the first moment that I saw a giant triangular shadow on the horizon, a pyramid, will forever be engrained in my memory. I think that was the first moment it really sank in that I'm living in Egypt for the next 3 years. We were distracted from the pyramids by neon lights in the distance. We pulled up to a crowded outdoor club- no roof, no floor, just sand and stars and thatch huts and low tables and carpets on the ground. It was breathtaking. We settled in on our cushions in the very front of the club, closest to the makeshift stage, when someone gasped. We all looked around….and there was a man holding a lion. A lion cub, to be exact. He came over and let us all hold it and take pictures with it. Cuddling with a lion cub in the shadow of the pyramids has got to be the coolest thing I had ever done up until that point. From that point, we ate delicious food, danced to American music, limbo-ed, watched Oriental dancing, and Katie did karaoke. We danced our asses off, generally acting like idiots.
Goose and I have been joking around for the past few days about getting married, and I gave him a ring to surprise me with at some point. The plan was to do something really embarrassing when I least expected it. As we were getting ready to leave the club around 4:30am, Goose decided he wanted to dance. I couldn’t figure out why he wanted to dance so badly, because I was tired. He finally pulled me up on stage, and we were the only ones up there. Embarrassed, I looked at him and said, "well, go ahead, you're the one who wanted to dance so badly." At this point, he got down on one knee, pulled out the ring, and "proposed". Unfortunately, none of our friends saw, but about fifty Egyptians got up and clapped and congratulated us, thinking it was a real engagement. I was thoroughly embarrassed, but now we refer to ourselves as fiancées and most of the people we've met since then think we actually are.
After that, as the sun was coming up, I got on a dramadery [a two-hump camel] that was wayyyy higher than the camels I'm used to from Morocco and very scary. We rode out into the desert and had tea in the shadow of the pyramids, and then built a human pyramid in front of them. After that, I traded in my camel for an Arabian stallion and galloped full-speed back to the club, which was simultaneously the scariest and most exhilarating ten minutes of my life—riding through the desert beside the pyramids nearly bareback on a stallion. It was incredible. We took the long busride back to campus, and we all slept all day.
We stayed up all that night playing a game in the common room, and the next day I finally got to register for my classes.
Last night Goose and I stayed up watching text updates from the Alabama game – ROLL TIDE! We won, and it made me miss home and football so much, but I do love it here and I know that this is where I'm supposed to be.
Goose and I are slowly turning into a real couple…I suppose joking about it enough will do that. It's strange. I adore him. He is by far the funniest person I've ever met and he makes me laugh constantly. He's also the most caring, genuine, earnest person I know here, and I know he cares about me a lot already, I just don’t know that I want anything "official" or serious right now, so I have to figure out a way to keep my distance somehow.
I finally got to bed at 4am, and woke up at 7:20 to get ready for my 8:30 Arabic class. Intermediate Arabic at 8:30am after only a few hours of sleep kicked my ass, so I'm gonna have to start getting more sleep.
Now I'm off to Science and Tech of Ancient Egypt, my science class. Sorry this entry was so long…it took DAYS to write. I'll start keeping up better, promise. Miss you all!
It Seems Like Everywhere I Go, the More I See the Less I Know
I find that, somehow moreso in Egypt than in Morocco, I am constantly making an ass of myself here. Perhaps it's because the campus is way too big for the meager 5,000 students who go here and I'm constantly wandering around like an Alzheimer's patient. Perhaps it's because I'm more ballsy about my actions now that it's my second time in MENA. And I suppose it's partly because a lot of times in Morocco I felt like I played it too safe instead of taking risks. This time around, I decided I really want to live, and experience everything, not just observe. I think that, despite the constant ass-making I do, always seeming clueless and lost, I'll be happy that I chose to do things this way in the long run.
Yesterday I didn't have much to do: I signed up for some trips [Alexandria, Bedouin Night, and Giza..there's a 3-day cruise over our long weekend in September too, but its 1750 LE, around $350. Needless to say, I won't be going.], tried to sign my loan check [they wouldn’t let me because I haven’t registered for my classes], registered my e-mail address, and went to the one orientation meeting they have for transfer students. Know what I found out? There are only two transfer students this year, including me. And the other has lived in Cairo for a few years. Silly me. Somehow I thought it was more common to take the route I have. Apparently not.
After that enlightening experience, I hung out with "The Gang" in the common room for a few hours- the common room is the only place in the residential area that is co-ed. There's a group of about eight of us: me, Katie, Becky, Anna, Chris, Will, Zach, Rashid, and Adam. We all hang out together all the time, but the sad thing is all of them except Becky are leaving in December. I have a feeling that that's how things will be at AUC; I'll have to make new friends every semester. We hung around, played BS, and then went to dinner at Tabasco. After that we tried to get a football game together, but we were too disorganized. At 10pm, we caught the bus to Zamalek to go to a bar. It was about an hour's ride there, along busy highways and overpasses. The skyline on the way was so diverse: huge mosque minarets penetrating the black night sky, grandiose hotels, and decrepit buildings literally falling apart around the residents. I also had an enthralling conversation with my new bff Will [I never call him Will- he will henceforth be referred to as Goose or Sunshine. He looks EXACTLY like Goose Dunham. I know, I'm gay.] that ended in my nearly peeing on myself when he asked how I liked his "smell". We got off the bus and Zach, the fearless leader [who was so dedicated to finding a bar that he had drawn up a map], led the speed-walk to a fancy bar on the banks of the Nile. No alcohol here, we were told. [Note: right now is Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, where they fast all day and get to eat all night. It's a little difficult to find alcohol here right now.]
Disappointed but not defeated, we started a two mile trek to the Mariott, which has a pub in it. We walked through dank alleyways full of stray cats, passed all the embassies, and practiced our extreme jay-walking [friends from Morocco take note before you come visit me: crossing the street in Cairo is wayyyyy more intense than it was in Morocco. Try crossing 6 lanes of speeding vehicles Meknes-style. It's a rush.]. We FINALLY made it to Harry's Pub, where we quickly placed an exceptionally large order and were delivered exceptionally large Sakara Gold beers [Bama folks: about the size of a Big Ass Beer in Nola]. We had the whole pub to ourselves [again, it's Ramadan] and had a great time talking, watching soccer on the TV, and laughing about how much trouble we went through to get alcohol. Typical Americans. Four Exceptionally Large Beers and two hours later, we stumbled through the streets of Zamalek trying to retrace our steps to find the bus stop. After getting lost several times, we made it to the bus and I had an intense discussion with Chris. Around 3am, I poured myself into bed [the night before I had only gotten two hours of sleep].
I woke up at 8:30, too lazy to take a shower, and ran errands on campus- trying to register and whatnot. Important discoveries today: AUC is only accepting 24 [possibly 30] of my 60 credits from Alabama. This means I will probably be here for THREE years. And also, I can't register for classes until Saturay. School starts Sunday [since Friday is the Muslim holy day, the weekend here is Friday and Saturday. The school week starts Sunday. We'll see how many times this causes me to miss class on Sunday. Predication: a lot.]. Also, the trip to Giza is at the same time on Saturday, so I will miss seeing the pyramids. All rather disappointing discoveries.
Anyway, I'm off to nap- 7 hours sleep in two days is just not okay.
Also, I'm sorry I haven't really described Cairo much. The truth is, on the AUC compound, I don’t really see much of anything except desert, and I've only been off the compound twice. I will definitely try, but let me give a disclaimer: nothing I write will ever do Cairo justice. You'll never get the feel of the broken sidewalk, the chalky-dustiness of the ground, the gray tint to the sky, to heat of the Egyptian sun pounding down on you, the hum of all manner of different languages. For that, I apologize. Come visit me and see for yourself.
Yesterday I didn't have much to do: I signed up for some trips [Alexandria, Bedouin Night, and Giza..there's a 3-day cruise over our long weekend in September too, but its 1750 LE, around $350. Needless to say, I won't be going.], tried to sign my loan check [they wouldn’t let me because I haven’t registered for my classes], registered my e-mail address, and went to the one orientation meeting they have for transfer students. Know what I found out? There are only two transfer students this year, including me. And the other has lived in Cairo for a few years. Silly me. Somehow I thought it was more common to take the route I have. Apparently not.
After that enlightening experience, I hung out with "The Gang" in the common room for a few hours- the common room is the only place in the residential area that is co-ed. There's a group of about eight of us: me, Katie, Becky, Anna, Chris, Will, Zach, Rashid, and Adam. We all hang out together all the time, but the sad thing is all of them except Becky are leaving in December. I have a feeling that that's how things will be at AUC; I'll have to make new friends every semester. We hung around, played BS, and then went to dinner at Tabasco. After that we tried to get a football game together, but we were too disorganized. At 10pm, we caught the bus to Zamalek to go to a bar. It was about an hour's ride there, along busy highways and overpasses. The skyline on the way was so diverse: huge mosque minarets penetrating the black night sky, grandiose hotels, and decrepit buildings literally falling apart around the residents. I also had an enthralling conversation with my new bff Will [I never call him Will- he will henceforth be referred to as Goose or Sunshine. He looks EXACTLY like Goose Dunham. I know, I'm gay.] that ended in my nearly peeing on myself when he asked how I liked his "smell". We got off the bus and Zach, the fearless leader [who was so dedicated to finding a bar that he had drawn up a map], led the speed-walk to a fancy bar on the banks of the Nile. No alcohol here, we were told. [Note: right now is Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, where they fast all day and get to eat all night. It's a little difficult to find alcohol here right now.]
Disappointed but not defeated, we started a two mile trek to the Mariott, which has a pub in it. We walked through dank alleyways full of stray cats, passed all the embassies, and practiced our extreme jay-walking [friends from Morocco take note before you come visit me: crossing the street in Cairo is wayyyyy more intense than it was in Morocco. Try crossing 6 lanes of speeding vehicles Meknes-style. It's a rush.]. We FINALLY made it to Harry's Pub, where we quickly placed an exceptionally large order and were delivered exceptionally large Sakara Gold beers [Bama folks: about the size of a Big Ass Beer in Nola]. We had the whole pub to ourselves [again, it's Ramadan] and had a great time talking, watching soccer on the TV, and laughing about how much trouble we went through to get alcohol. Typical Americans. Four Exceptionally Large Beers and two hours later, we stumbled through the streets of Zamalek trying to retrace our steps to find the bus stop. After getting lost several times, we made it to the bus and I had an intense discussion with Chris. Around 3am, I poured myself into bed [the night before I had only gotten two hours of sleep].
I woke up at 8:30, too lazy to take a shower, and ran errands on campus- trying to register and whatnot. Important discoveries today: AUC is only accepting 24 [possibly 30] of my 60 credits from Alabama. This means I will probably be here for THREE years. And also, I can't register for classes until Saturay. School starts Sunday [since Friday is the Muslim holy day, the weekend here is Friday and Saturday. The school week starts Sunday. We'll see how many times this causes me to miss class on Sunday. Predication: a lot.]. Also, the trip to Giza is at the same time on Saturday, so I will miss seeing the pyramids. All rather disappointing discoveries.
Anyway, I'm off to nap- 7 hours sleep in two days is just not okay.
Also, I'm sorry I haven't really described Cairo much. The truth is, on the AUC compound, I don’t really see much of anything except desert, and I've only been off the compound twice. I will definitely try, but let me give a disclaimer: nothing I write will ever do Cairo justice. You'll never get the feel of the broken sidewalk, the chalky-dustiness of the ground, the gray tint to the sky, to heat of the Egyptian sun pounding down on you, the hum of all manner of different languages. For that, I apologize. Come visit me and see for yourself.
You wanna know about Egypt? Oh, I'll TELL you about Egypt.
Hello from New Cairo, Egypt! Sit back and relax, kids, because this is gonna be a long blog. Or, if you are one of my friends from college, scroll through until you find a cuss word.
I have a lot to say, so I'll start from the beginning, which I suppose is leaving Tuscaloosa. I hung around Tuscaloosa all summer in my house at the Village at Brook Meadows and did all kinds of stuff: went to Los Cal, hung out with Phi Sig, nearly got robbed, nearly got arrested, nearly got robbed again, went skinny-dipping, got drunk…you know, the usual. I stayed until Bid Day, and I had a great time with everyone. A few big things marked my departure from Tuscyloosey. First, the night before I was supposed to leave town, I was at the new Phi Sigma Kappa house, my usual summer hangout. I wasn't feeling well so I decided to go home early. Realizing this was probably my last time to see most of those guys, I started saying my goodbyes, when one of my friends stood up on a cooler: "I propose a toast. To Egypt!" All of the other boys put their glasses in the air and said things about how they would miss me and it wouldn’t be the same without me, and before I knew it, I was sobbing. It was a touching moment for me.
I also got to experience my first Bid Day as an ex-Phi Mu. It was strange, sweating in the Alabama humidity in my sundress, being on the other side of the fence around the Phi Mu house. But to be honest, I welcomed the change. Looking at the girls standing in the yard, I knew I wasn't one of them. And for the first time since my Bid Day in 2007, I wasn’t trying to be, wasn’t pretending to be. I stood on the "wrong" side of the fence knowing that their place was inside of it, and mine was beyond it. And that was okay.
Probably the biggest event for me was an unexpected reunion. Everyone who knows me knows that I have a very tight-knit group of friends affectionately referred to as "The Cult". We've been friends since my first month of college and those three boys mean more to me than nearly anyone else in the world. Most people who know me well also know that I had a falling out with a Cult member, my best friend Murphy, over A-Day weekend in April. I won't go into why; it's not important and most of you probably know anyway. But the four months since we have been estranged have been some of the hardest of my life: it's like a part of me was missing, but I still sensed it there, still needed it…like a phantom limb after an amputation. As I was saying my goodbyes to the other Cult members that Sunday, a feeling washed over me; something akin to anger mixed with a deep, unrelenting loss. I wasn't willing to accept the fact that I would never see or speak to my best friend again. So I texted him. And then something amazing happened. He texted back. We met for dinner, there were tears, and hugs, and I couldn’t have been happier as I left Tuscaloosa for the last time.
The next Friday my parents threw me a going-away party, and from what I can remember, it was lots of fun. All I will say about this party is that I drank an entire bottle of Sweet Carolina in one night. The fact that I'm still alive amazes me.
Finally, after months of planning, thousands of dollars, countless tears, and tons of fights, I was at the Atlanta airport with my parents. Saying goodbye to them was one of the hardest things I've done in a long time. I had an inexplicable lump in my throat and where I had been trying to be strong, the tears prevailed. Seeing my parents cry is never an easy thing. After lots of hugs and "I love you"'s I went through security and left the Deep South behind, with a one way ticket to Egypt and two suitcases for two years.
I made it to DC on time and proceeded to wait for a ridiculously long time; my flight to London was delayed. I watched the land zoom by as I left America and the real adventure began.
I got half an hour of sleep on the seven hour flight to London, but I did get to watch "I Love You, Man". The flight was bumpy but I was still relatively pleasant when I got to Heathrow. The girl next to me and I struck up a conversation- she's from Jordan and has spent a lot of time in Egypt. She helped me find my way through Heathrow and we stopped to get a coffee before my flight left. This is when the trouble started. I put in my international SIM card and…nothing. I couldn’t make calls at all. I should have braced myself then.
I got on a tiny plane at a far extremity of the airport and took off for Cairo. I was nearly comatose during those four hours. I was deliriously tired but could not fall asleep. It was torture. As we began our descent into Egypt, I looked at the ground and saw…a lot of green strangely enough. A weird feeling of disappointment was beginning to course through me, when the plane turned and I was blinded by the sun. When I was able to see clearly again, I looked down and saw…sand. Lots of sand. And the Nile weaving its way through the sand, canals breaking off every which way. If only I had been a little more lucid, it would have been one of the most blissful sights ever. Feeling near death, I got off the plane in Cairo and stumbled through Customs, and got my luggage when I realized, there was no one waiting on me. Oh, shit. What do I do? Just as I was starting to really panic, I saw a huge group of Americans, and one held up a sign that said AUC. I was ecstatic. Finally, we boarded a bus meant for ten people- there were 15 of us plus two pieces of luggage each. To say we were crowded was an understatement. After half an hour of navigating through the airport's ridiculous roadway, we got out into Cairo, and it was everything I hoped for: dirty, rough around the edges, but ambitious. There were cars and motorcycles with four people on the back and donkey carts and pedestrians casually strolling in front of speeding cars. It was just like Morocco and I felt at home. The feeling would not last long.
AUC is surrounded by a lot of crap. For miles there are half-built mansions which look like they have been abandoned festering in the sun, waiting for completion. There was trash everywhere, but I didn’t mind that. After numerous u-turns [not because we were lost, because the roads weren't planned well] we finally pulled into Gate 4 of AUC. We hauled our stuff off of the bus and two by two, passed through security, where they x-rayed and hand –searched our bags and made us walk through metal detectors. Then a university employee loaded our bags onto a golf cart and dropped us off across campus at the women's dormitories. I got my room assignment and an RA walked me to my room. She showed me where it was…and then left. I mean, I know she was busy helping people move in, but I had no clue what to do. I immediately tried to get on the internet, but it wasn't working. I thought, I'll at least set up my computer. Oh, wait. The electricity from the wall isn’t working. Remember, I still don’t have a working phone. I have no way to get in touch with anyone. That's when panic set in. I was starving; there was no one else in my building yet; I was completely alone. I got in my bed, accepting the fact that I would be alone and hungry that night. I was almost asleep when my phone went off. I had a text message from my dad! I was so happy I nearly cried. We could send and receive texts, but not make calls to one another. Depressed and not knowing what else to do, I went to sleep.
Luckily my jet-lag woke me up at 3:30 in the morning and I had a text from my dad telling me to meet our family friend Amy, who works here in Cairo, at the AUC bookstore in the morning. Alhamdulelah! I went back to sleep, tossing and turning in the heat, and finally woke up at 7:45 to take a shower. I went to the bathroom, and there was no water. Ughh. Really??? Finally, around 8, the water started working and I showered and sat down with a map to find the bookstore. It wasn't too hard to locate on the map, until I realized where it was in relation to my dorm. Imagine a long, winding path, with side-paths branching out in all directions. That's the AUC campus. My dorm is on the far end of the path- really, it’s the farthest building on one side of the campus…the wall securing the little compound it right outside my window. The bookstore was on the exact other end of campus, nearly a mile's walk, and the map was an architect's sketch of the university….not exactly clear on how to get there. I sat down, defeated already, and wondered what to do. Finally, I grew some balls, grabbed my stuff, and set off. I ended up asking tons of people for directions, none of whom spoke English, but finally, after passing through the gates separating the campus from the desolation beyond it, I saw Amy and her son Sam waiting for me. The feeling of relief was instant. We climbed into her SUV and headed for Maadi, the suburb she lives in.
I really would have been lost without her. She took me home, where her husband Dave had breakfast waiting on me. After that, we set off to get a new SIM card, an adapter for my computer, and various other things I needed to survive. We stopped at a McDonalds for lunch, where Sam decided to wet himself. Laughing, we went back home where I got to call my parents –finally!- and lounge for a few hours. Then, Amy and I went to her kids' school and hung out at the playground while Sam and his friends ran around. When we got back, delicious Thai food was waiting on us, which I devoured, and gratefully accepted a much-needed beer from Dave. Finally, around nine, Amy brought me back to campus and we cajoled a guard into taking us from the Pepsi Gate - I'm not kidding, our school is sponsored by Pepsi- to my dorm in a golf cart because we had a lot of groceries from the embassy commissary.
Then, on Sunday, I slept in until about 1, trying to sleep off the rest of my jet lag. My roommate showed up. She is British but has lived in Cairo for the past two years, and, here's the kicker—she's sixteen. Yeah. For a sixteen year old, we get along pretty well. I finally got up and went to get my Orientation packet and met up with some girls I knew from the bus from the airport. We ended up going to the dorm meeting together, and also decided to take the 8pm bus from campus to City Stars, a mall about a half hour away, together. Right away, everyone on my bus got along great. When we were in the meeting, I saw a really cute boy, and lo and behold, he was on the bus. I decided at the meeting that he was my conquest for the semester, and after the night was over, I had his phone number, knew his life story, and we were on a last-name basis, which as any frat guy knows, is closer than a first name basis. We did some shopping at City Stars, and everyone in the group got their phones working. Then, someone had the brilliant idea to go to a hookah bar a "few blocks away". We wandered out of the mall, but no one knew quite where it was. We stopped to ask a group, and instead of telling us, they took us there. It ended up being a half hour walk to the place, but it was worth it. The ambiance was incredible and we had a great time smoking and getting to know each other all night. The guys who took us even stayed and translated for us, and offered to take us sight-seeing tonight, gratis, which is amazing. One of the Egyptians, Akhmed, is the international chess grandmaster. I kid you not- it's on his business card!
We missed the 12am bus back to campus, so we stayed a smoked for a few more hours, then rode the 2am bus home. With tons of new numbers in my phone and a dozen or so new friends, by the end of the night I was feeling pretty good about Egypt. Good, because I needed it. Today I'm going to attempt to figure out registration and get my ID card- insha'allah. Wish me luck!
I have a lot to say, so I'll start from the beginning, which I suppose is leaving Tuscaloosa. I hung around Tuscaloosa all summer in my house at the Village at Brook Meadows and did all kinds of stuff: went to Los Cal, hung out with Phi Sig, nearly got robbed, nearly got arrested, nearly got robbed again, went skinny-dipping, got drunk…you know, the usual. I stayed until Bid Day, and I had a great time with everyone. A few big things marked my departure from Tuscyloosey. First, the night before I was supposed to leave town, I was at the new Phi Sigma Kappa house, my usual summer hangout. I wasn't feeling well so I decided to go home early. Realizing this was probably my last time to see most of those guys, I started saying my goodbyes, when one of my friends stood up on a cooler: "I propose a toast. To Egypt!" All of the other boys put their glasses in the air and said things about how they would miss me and it wouldn’t be the same without me, and before I knew it, I was sobbing. It was a touching moment for me.
I also got to experience my first Bid Day as an ex-Phi Mu. It was strange, sweating in the Alabama humidity in my sundress, being on the other side of the fence around the Phi Mu house. But to be honest, I welcomed the change. Looking at the girls standing in the yard, I knew I wasn't one of them. And for the first time since my Bid Day in 2007, I wasn’t trying to be, wasn’t pretending to be. I stood on the "wrong" side of the fence knowing that their place was inside of it, and mine was beyond it. And that was okay.
Probably the biggest event for me was an unexpected reunion. Everyone who knows me knows that I have a very tight-knit group of friends affectionately referred to as "The Cult". We've been friends since my first month of college and those three boys mean more to me than nearly anyone else in the world. Most people who know me well also know that I had a falling out with a Cult member, my best friend Murphy, over A-Day weekend in April. I won't go into why; it's not important and most of you probably know anyway. But the four months since we have been estranged have been some of the hardest of my life: it's like a part of me was missing, but I still sensed it there, still needed it…like a phantom limb after an amputation. As I was saying my goodbyes to the other Cult members that Sunday, a feeling washed over me; something akin to anger mixed with a deep, unrelenting loss. I wasn't willing to accept the fact that I would never see or speak to my best friend again. So I texted him. And then something amazing happened. He texted back. We met for dinner, there were tears, and hugs, and I couldn’t have been happier as I left Tuscaloosa for the last time.
The next Friday my parents threw me a going-away party, and from what I can remember, it was lots of fun. All I will say about this party is that I drank an entire bottle of Sweet Carolina in one night. The fact that I'm still alive amazes me.
Finally, after months of planning, thousands of dollars, countless tears, and tons of fights, I was at the Atlanta airport with my parents. Saying goodbye to them was one of the hardest things I've done in a long time. I had an inexplicable lump in my throat and where I had been trying to be strong, the tears prevailed. Seeing my parents cry is never an easy thing. After lots of hugs and "I love you"'s I went through security and left the Deep South behind, with a one way ticket to Egypt and two suitcases for two years.
I made it to DC on time and proceeded to wait for a ridiculously long time; my flight to London was delayed. I watched the land zoom by as I left America and the real adventure began.
I got half an hour of sleep on the seven hour flight to London, but I did get to watch "I Love You, Man". The flight was bumpy but I was still relatively pleasant when I got to Heathrow. The girl next to me and I struck up a conversation- she's from Jordan and has spent a lot of time in Egypt. She helped me find my way through Heathrow and we stopped to get a coffee before my flight left. This is when the trouble started. I put in my international SIM card and…nothing. I couldn’t make calls at all. I should have braced myself then.
I got on a tiny plane at a far extremity of the airport and took off for Cairo. I was nearly comatose during those four hours. I was deliriously tired but could not fall asleep. It was torture. As we began our descent into Egypt, I looked at the ground and saw…a lot of green strangely enough. A weird feeling of disappointment was beginning to course through me, when the plane turned and I was blinded by the sun. When I was able to see clearly again, I looked down and saw…sand. Lots of sand. And the Nile weaving its way through the sand, canals breaking off every which way. If only I had been a little more lucid, it would have been one of the most blissful sights ever. Feeling near death, I got off the plane in Cairo and stumbled through Customs, and got my luggage when I realized, there was no one waiting on me. Oh, shit. What do I do? Just as I was starting to really panic, I saw a huge group of Americans, and one held up a sign that said AUC. I was ecstatic. Finally, we boarded a bus meant for ten people- there were 15 of us plus two pieces of luggage each. To say we were crowded was an understatement. After half an hour of navigating through the airport's ridiculous roadway, we got out into Cairo, and it was everything I hoped for: dirty, rough around the edges, but ambitious. There were cars and motorcycles with four people on the back and donkey carts and pedestrians casually strolling in front of speeding cars. It was just like Morocco and I felt at home. The feeling would not last long.
AUC is surrounded by a lot of crap. For miles there are half-built mansions which look like they have been abandoned festering in the sun, waiting for completion. There was trash everywhere, but I didn’t mind that. After numerous u-turns [not because we were lost, because the roads weren't planned well] we finally pulled into Gate 4 of AUC. We hauled our stuff off of the bus and two by two, passed through security, where they x-rayed and hand –searched our bags and made us walk through metal detectors. Then a university employee loaded our bags onto a golf cart and dropped us off across campus at the women's dormitories. I got my room assignment and an RA walked me to my room. She showed me where it was…and then left. I mean, I know she was busy helping people move in, but I had no clue what to do. I immediately tried to get on the internet, but it wasn't working. I thought, I'll at least set up my computer. Oh, wait. The electricity from the wall isn’t working. Remember, I still don’t have a working phone. I have no way to get in touch with anyone. That's when panic set in. I was starving; there was no one else in my building yet; I was completely alone. I got in my bed, accepting the fact that I would be alone and hungry that night. I was almost asleep when my phone went off. I had a text message from my dad! I was so happy I nearly cried. We could send and receive texts, but not make calls to one another. Depressed and not knowing what else to do, I went to sleep.
Luckily my jet-lag woke me up at 3:30 in the morning and I had a text from my dad telling me to meet our family friend Amy, who works here in Cairo, at the AUC bookstore in the morning. Alhamdulelah! I went back to sleep, tossing and turning in the heat, and finally woke up at 7:45 to take a shower. I went to the bathroom, and there was no water. Ughh. Really??? Finally, around 8, the water started working and I showered and sat down with a map to find the bookstore. It wasn't too hard to locate on the map, until I realized where it was in relation to my dorm. Imagine a long, winding path, with side-paths branching out in all directions. That's the AUC campus. My dorm is on the far end of the path- really, it’s the farthest building on one side of the campus…the wall securing the little compound it right outside my window. The bookstore was on the exact other end of campus, nearly a mile's walk, and the map was an architect's sketch of the university….not exactly clear on how to get there. I sat down, defeated already, and wondered what to do. Finally, I grew some balls, grabbed my stuff, and set off. I ended up asking tons of people for directions, none of whom spoke English, but finally, after passing through the gates separating the campus from the desolation beyond it, I saw Amy and her son Sam waiting for me. The feeling of relief was instant. We climbed into her SUV and headed for Maadi, the suburb she lives in.
I really would have been lost without her. She took me home, where her husband Dave had breakfast waiting on me. After that, we set off to get a new SIM card, an adapter for my computer, and various other things I needed to survive. We stopped at a McDonalds for lunch, where Sam decided to wet himself. Laughing, we went back home where I got to call my parents –finally!- and lounge for a few hours. Then, Amy and I went to her kids' school and hung out at the playground while Sam and his friends ran around. When we got back, delicious Thai food was waiting on us, which I devoured, and gratefully accepted a much-needed beer from Dave. Finally, around nine, Amy brought me back to campus and we cajoled a guard into taking us from the Pepsi Gate - I'm not kidding, our school is sponsored by Pepsi- to my dorm in a golf cart because we had a lot of groceries from the embassy commissary.
Then, on Sunday, I slept in until about 1, trying to sleep off the rest of my jet lag. My roommate showed up. She is British but has lived in Cairo for the past two years, and, here's the kicker—she's sixteen. Yeah. For a sixteen year old, we get along pretty well. I finally got up and went to get my Orientation packet and met up with some girls I knew from the bus from the airport. We ended up going to the dorm meeting together, and also decided to take the 8pm bus from campus to City Stars, a mall about a half hour away, together. Right away, everyone on my bus got along great. When we were in the meeting, I saw a really cute boy, and lo and behold, he was on the bus. I decided at the meeting that he was my conquest for the semester, and after the night was over, I had his phone number, knew his life story, and we were on a last-name basis, which as any frat guy knows, is closer than a first name basis. We did some shopping at City Stars, and everyone in the group got their phones working. Then, someone had the brilliant idea to go to a hookah bar a "few blocks away". We wandered out of the mall, but no one knew quite where it was. We stopped to ask a group, and instead of telling us, they took us there. It ended up being a half hour walk to the place, but it was worth it. The ambiance was incredible and we had a great time smoking and getting to know each other all night. The guys who took us even stayed and translated for us, and offered to take us sight-seeing tonight, gratis, which is amazing. One of the Egyptians, Akhmed, is the international chess grandmaster. I kid you not- it's on his business card!
We missed the 12am bus back to campus, so we stayed a smoked for a few more hours, then rode the 2am bus home. With tons of new numbers in my phone and a dozen or so new friends, by the end of the night I was feeling pretty good about Egypt. Good, because I needed it. Today I'm going to attempt to figure out registration and get my ID card- insha'allah. Wish me luck!
Pre-Departure To-Do List
-Buy a really good Arabic-English dictionary. How have I made it through two years of Arabic study without one?
-Buy lonely planet guide to Egypt, and probably Israel, and Jordan...and everywhere else I think I might be able to convince my parents to let me go.
-Get really fat so I'll have lots of extra weight to shed as I waste away at the mercy of the heat and my digestive system.
-Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Kidding. But seriously. I need to indulge in every vice I have before I have to go behave for two years.
-Eat lots of Los Calientes.
-Buy a new pair of Rainbows.
-Re-read Tales of a Female Nomad for inspiration.
-Drive. Alot.
-Take a walk around campus and say goodbye to everything I know about the college experience in America.
-Study Arabic. No, seriously. Study Arabic until my epiglottis hurts.
-Try to be fearless.
-Buy lonely planet guide to Egypt, and probably Israel, and Jordan...and everywhere else I think I might be able to convince my parents to let me go.
-Get really fat so I'll have lots of extra weight to shed as I waste away at the mercy of the heat and my digestive system.
-Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Kidding. But seriously. I need to indulge in every vice I have before I have to go behave for two years.
-Eat lots of Los Calientes.
-Buy a new pair of Rainbows.
-Re-read Tales of a Female Nomad for inspiration.
-Drive. Alot.
-Take a walk around campus and say goodbye to everything I know about the college experience in America.
-Study Arabic. No, seriously. Study Arabic until my epiglottis hurts.
-Try to be fearless.
41 days!
It's been a while, blog!
In fact, it's been nearly a year! It's just been a regular year here in Tuscaloosa; I've been enjoying America and missing Morocco terribly. Since I've been back, I've seen Michael and Jennifer twice, Brigid once, I'm seeing Autumn this Friday, and I talk to Ben on the phone once a week like clockwork. Alabama is home sweet home, but it's time to move on. Seeing as UA doesn't offer my desired major, I made the difficult decision to transfer elsewhere to finish school. The first week of June, I got the most exciting news of my life: I've been accepted to the American University in Cairo...that's right- Cairo, Egypt! So on August 27, I'll be hoppin on a flight from Atlanta, to DC, to London, to Cairo, all by myself. Funny to think I didnt come to college a few states away without my parents, and now I'm moving to an entirely different continent completely alone with a one way ticket and two suitcases.
Anyway, since I'm heading back to al-alum al-arabiyya, I'm starting my blog up again to chronicle this exciting new adventure I'm about to go on, to document getting settled and building a new life in a different country just like I did in Morocco last summer. Only this time, it's for real. I will be in Egypt for at least two years, however, knowing me, it will be a long time before I come back to America to live fulltime. The things I am going to see and do and the people I'm going to meet are incredible, I just know it. I really feel like this is what I'm supposed to be doing at this point in my life. I'm less afraid than I was before I left for Morocco; I feel more prepared. My Arabic is better [two high A's in my advanced arabic language courses this year!], I know more about the culture and religion, plus I am proficient in Spanish, Hebrew, and Turkish...there's bound to be SOMEONE I can communicate with in SOME way no matter where I am. This is my dream come true and I hope you are all as excited as I am about it!
41 days and counting!
Salaam wa hubb,
Danielle
In fact, it's been nearly a year! It's just been a regular year here in Tuscaloosa; I've been enjoying America and missing Morocco terribly. Since I've been back, I've seen Michael and Jennifer twice, Brigid once, I'm seeing Autumn this Friday, and I talk to Ben on the phone once a week like clockwork. Alabama is home sweet home, but it's time to move on. Seeing as UA doesn't offer my desired major, I made the difficult decision to transfer elsewhere to finish school. The first week of June, I got the most exciting news of my life: I've been accepted to the American University in Cairo...that's right- Cairo, Egypt! So on August 27, I'll be hoppin on a flight from Atlanta, to DC, to London, to Cairo, all by myself. Funny to think I didnt come to college a few states away without my parents, and now I'm moving to an entirely different continent completely alone with a one way ticket and two suitcases.
Anyway, since I'm heading back to al-alum al-arabiyya, I'm starting my blog up again to chronicle this exciting new adventure I'm about to go on, to document getting settled and building a new life in a different country just like I did in Morocco last summer. Only this time, it's for real. I will be in Egypt for at least two years, however, knowing me, it will be a long time before I come back to America to live fulltime. The things I am going to see and do and the people I'm going to meet are incredible, I just know it. I really feel like this is what I'm supposed to be doing at this point in my life. I'm less afraid than I was before I left for Morocco; I feel more prepared. My Arabic is better [two high A's in my advanced arabic language courses this year!], I know more about the culture and religion, plus I am proficient in Spanish, Hebrew, and Turkish...there's bound to be SOMEONE I can communicate with in SOME way no matter where I am. This is my dream come true and I hope you are all as excited as I am about it!
41 days and counting!
Salaam wa hubb,
Danielle
...
Ok- last Morocco entry!
Right now I’m on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean headed to New York City from Casablanca. It’s been an exhausting few days, and I’m completely emotionally drained at this point. Saying goodbye to all my friends was really hard; probably harder than I expected it to be. But I’ll start with Thursday.
Thursday, all the girls woke up early and Iman met us at the apartment to take us to the hammam. As always, somehow getting scrubbed by an old cranky woman who smelled bad made me feel wonderful! Sufficiently cleansed, we headed back home, got ready, and Julia, Lauren, and I went back to the medina for one last day of shopping. I spent a lot of money in a short amount of time- no surprise there. We also had the world’s most amazing omelette fromage sandwiches, and got our last fix of freshly squeezed Moroccan orange juice. Wow, am I ever gonna miss that!
At 4:30, we took our last taxi to Moulay Ismail, where we finished our oral Arabic exam and had the closing ceremony. It was filled with tons of delicious Moroccan snacks that would rot my teeth completely if I stayed here, and mint tea. All of the professors talked, and we had a kind of roast where the students imitated our professors and vice versa. Towards the end, Daniel said something akin to, “Know that you will always have a home in Meknes,” and it finally hit me that we were really leaving and I just felt this overwhelming wave of sadness. How is it possible that in two months we had created a whole new life in a whole new country on a whole new continent, and formed a family out of 14 strangers? We had made new friends, found new hangouts, attended a new school, learned a new language; it was like trying on a different life for two months. That night, I was really quiet and kept to myself, just thinking about returning to reality, to my real life waiting on me in Tuscaloosa. I know things will fit differently, and I’m a little nervous to see how. But I also know that it is home, and no matter how much I have loved Morocco, there’s no feeling like going home. Grades were also handed out at the ceremony, along with a diploma-type certificate in both Arabic and English. I ended up with a B in Arabic, which isn’t bad considering it was Intermediate Arabic taught by a man who barely speaks English. I know I learned a lot, and I’m satisfied with that.
Later that evening [much later- around 11:30], Iman brought the henna lady over to give us some fresh henna for the journey home. This time, most of us opted for black henna on our feet. It looks really beautiful, and I felt like it would be a good souvenir to take home and have for a few weeks.
Then, at 2am, Ben, Jared, Daniel, Julia and I took Jennifer to the train station because her flight left Friday morning. It was really sad, realizing that we were all beginning to go our separate ways. Watching her train pull away, I realized things will never be the same again. This summer will eventually become a memory, something I tell my kids about, or think of when I pull out my Berber rug…but it will never happen again. The way things were in Meknes, the dynamic between all of us and the relationships we shared – good and bad- will never be the same. And that’s sad. But it’s life, I suppose.
Friday was kind of a lazy day. We all woke up late- I woke up at 11:30,the latest I’ve ever woken up in Morocco! Then something cool happened: we all sat in the living room and watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics for three hours. It was such appropriate timing for us. It was almost like closure. We sat, awestruck, through the first hour, and then patiently waited as the countries’ teams paraded out, waiting to see our two countries. America was the first, and seeing the red, white, and blue, seeing our athletes, and the President and First Lady made us all really excited about coming back to the US. No matter how much we love Morocco, America is our country and our home and there is no place I’d rather call home. We were all so moved by the feeling that swept across the living room that we [I know, this sounds gay, but you really wouldn’t be able to understand unless you had been through what we had this summer] all broke out into “America the Beautiful”. Completely serious. Not in jest, or in a silly way; we were dead serious and sang it all the way through as we watched the American flag cross that stadium, and even though now it sounds stupid, it was beautiful. There we were, eight kids in an apartment in the middle of Meknes, Morocco, watching the Olympics and singing “America the Beautiful”. I loved it.
We got almost as excited when we saw the Moroccan flag come out into the stadium, and I felt so much pride even though I’m not Moroccan. Imad said that we’ve lived here and made a life here and in a sense, we are Moroccans now. I agree. I will always feel a special attachment and a sting of nostalgia whenever I see the flag or hear the country mentioned. We were a little disappointed that the King wasn’t there; we were waiting to see him. Finally, the ceremony was over, and we all spent the next hour or so packing up our Moroccan life into our tidy American suitcases. It was amazing and sad how simply this entire new life of ours folded up into tiny suitcases, because it had all seemed so much bigger than that, like something that couldn’t be contained. But it was, and it was bittersweet.
After I had finished packing, I went downstairs to the boys’ apartment and watched Ben pack. Sitting on his bed, under his cowboy sheets, and watching his slightly unorthodox technique, I realized how much I would miss him. There are three people from this group [you know who you are- Merzouga forever!] who I will miss so much. Ben has been half dad, half best friend to me on this trip. He watches out for me in every situation- making sure I don’t pay too much while shopping, watching to be certain I don’t get lost in a crowd at a festival, holding me back from crossing the street when he doesn’t deem it safe; it’s so funny and adorable. I will miss that. [Ben, I will also miss being able to say, “Yeah, I’ve heard that one already”, every time you begin a story. Get some new ones before I see you again!]
Then, Ben, Imad, Issam, Jared, Patrick, Michael, and I went to the medina for a huge free concert in the Jawla series in front of the Bab Mansour. It was ridiculously crowded; you could barely move! But it was so much fun! It was such a great ending to our Moroccan adventure. I spent all night dancing and laughing. It was a crazy scene though: people being thrown in the air, amateur cheerleading stunts three and four people tall going up all over the audience, people whipping their shirts around their heads, and wild dancing. At one point, a group of Moroccan men surrounded me and Michael and began dancing. Standing in the middle of that wild circle, I was a little nervous, but finally I just went with it and danced like mad. By the time we found our way out of the crowd, I was sweaty and exhausted and disgusting, but thoroughly happy. It was a beautiful end to our stay in Meknes.
At 1am, the bus came to pick us up. All of our Moroccan friends were there to say goodbye, and that was hard, but I was holding up pretty well. But then, when I went to hug Moha [he had decided not to come to Casa with us] for the millionth time, I felt something wet on my neck and realized that he was sobbing. That’s when I lost it. Watching Moha cry broke my heart. He has been so wonderful and I will miss him so much.
There were only nine of us on the bus, and four out of those nine were crying. It was all really sad, but eventually, one by one, we fell asleep. We arrived in Casablanca at 4:30am and dragged our stuff upstairs, and laid down in the exact spot where we spent five hours waiting the day that we arrived in Morocco. There I was, sitting in the same place I had only two months earlier, but I felt like a completely different person. It was a strange sensation, being back there again, but so different. Addison, Michael and I curled up and fell asleep, and I was out until 9am. Lauren and Megan left, and soon, it was Addison, Julia and my time to leave. Alexa, Michael, and Ben took the shuttle over to Terminal 3 with us, where we all said tearful goodbyes. It was hard saying goodbye to Alexa, even harder saying goodbye to Ben [he’s no good at goodbyes-that was the hard part!], and hardest of all saying goodbye to Michael. He and I stood there hugging and crying for a few minutes, and then suddenly, the three of them were gone.
Crying, the three of us going to New York went to check in. There was a considerable amount of drama then, with Royal Air Maroc saying that there were no seats left of the plane for Julia. We waited at the check-in counter trying to sort things out until 15 minutes before our plane was supposed to leave. When she was finally handed her boarding pass, we made a mad dash through Customs, security, and out onto the tarmac, barely making the plane. I think we’re something like halfway to New York now. I’m really tired, but I doubt I can sleep. I’m gonna make a quick little list, and then try to get some rest.
THINGS I WILL MISS ABOUT MOROCCO
-my ISA family
- khubz arabiyy
-Marackchiya, milfay, and labonny
- constant heckling from guys [let’s be honest, it’s an esteem booster]
-mint tea and fresh orange juice
-the music
-the Medina
-air conditioner pants
-call to prayer
THINGS I WON’T MISS ABOUT MOROCCO
-the heat
-three hour classes
-the little kids begging for spare change
-that smell you get a whiff of when the wind blows; you know the one
-explosive diarrhea [overshare? Nah]
-constant heckling from guys
THINGS I’M EXCITED ABOUT IN AMERICA
-rain
-Taco Bell
-Dr Pepper
-ice
-laying out by the pool
-wearing cute clothes
-my new house in Tuscaloosa!
More to come later…
Salaam wa hubb,
-Danielle
Right now I’m on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean headed to New York City from Casablanca. It’s been an exhausting few days, and I’m completely emotionally drained at this point. Saying goodbye to all my friends was really hard; probably harder than I expected it to be. But I’ll start with Thursday.
Thursday, all the girls woke up early and Iman met us at the apartment to take us to the hammam. As always, somehow getting scrubbed by an old cranky woman who smelled bad made me feel wonderful! Sufficiently cleansed, we headed back home, got ready, and Julia, Lauren, and I went back to the medina for one last day of shopping. I spent a lot of money in a short amount of time- no surprise there. We also had the world’s most amazing omelette fromage sandwiches, and got our last fix of freshly squeezed Moroccan orange juice. Wow, am I ever gonna miss that!
At 4:30, we took our last taxi to Moulay Ismail, where we finished our oral Arabic exam and had the closing ceremony. It was filled with tons of delicious Moroccan snacks that would rot my teeth completely if I stayed here, and mint tea. All of the professors talked, and we had a kind of roast where the students imitated our professors and vice versa. Towards the end, Daniel said something akin to, “Know that you will always have a home in Meknes,” and it finally hit me that we were really leaving and I just felt this overwhelming wave of sadness. How is it possible that in two months we had created a whole new life in a whole new country on a whole new continent, and formed a family out of 14 strangers? We had made new friends, found new hangouts, attended a new school, learned a new language; it was like trying on a different life for two months. That night, I was really quiet and kept to myself, just thinking about returning to reality, to my real life waiting on me in Tuscaloosa. I know things will fit differently, and I’m a little nervous to see how. But I also know that it is home, and no matter how much I have loved Morocco, there’s no feeling like going home. Grades were also handed out at the ceremony, along with a diploma-type certificate in both Arabic and English. I ended up with a B in Arabic, which isn’t bad considering it was Intermediate Arabic taught by a man who barely speaks English. I know I learned a lot, and I’m satisfied with that.
Later that evening [much later- around 11:30], Iman brought the henna lady over to give us some fresh henna for the journey home. This time, most of us opted for black henna on our feet. It looks really beautiful, and I felt like it would be a good souvenir to take home and have for a few weeks.
Then, at 2am, Ben, Jared, Daniel, Julia and I took Jennifer to the train station because her flight left Friday morning. It was really sad, realizing that we were all beginning to go our separate ways. Watching her train pull away, I realized things will never be the same again. This summer will eventually become a memory, something I tell my kids about, or think of when I pull out my Berber rug…but it will never happen again. The way things were in Meknes, the dynamic between all of us and the relationships we shared – good and bad- will never be the same. And that’s sad. But it’s life, I suppose.
Friday was kind of a lazy day. We all woke up late- I woke up at 11:30,the latest I’ve ever woken up in Morocco! Then something cool happened: we all sat in the living room and watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics for three hours. It was such appropriate timing for us. It was almost like closure. We sat, awestruck, through the first hour, and then patiently waited as the countries’ teams paraded out, waiting to see our two countries. America was the first, and seeing the red, white, and blue, seeing our athletes, and the President and First Lady made us all really excited about coming back to the US. No matter how much we love Morocco, America is our country and our home and there is no place I’d rather call home. We were all so moved by the feeling that swept across the living room that we [I know, this sounds gay, but you really wouldn’t be able to understand unless you had been through what we had this summer] all broke out into “America the Beautiful”. Completely serious. Not in jest, or in a silly way; we were dead serious and sang it all the way through as we watched the American flag cross that stadium, and even though now it sounds stupid, it was beautiful. There we were, eight kids in an apartment in the middle of Meknes, Morocco, watching the Olympics and singing “America the Beautiful”. I loved it.
We got almost as excited when we saw the Moroccan flag come out into the stadium, and I felt so much pride even though I’m not Moroccan. Imad said that we’ve lived here and made a life here and in a sense, we are Moroccans now. I agree. I will always feel a special attachment and a sting of nostalgia whenever I see the flag or hear the country mentioned. We were a little disappointed that the King wasn’t there; we were waiting to see him. Finally, the ceremony was over, and we all spent the next hour or so packing up our Moroccan life into our tidy American suitcases. It was amazing and sad how simply this entire new life of ours folded up into tiny suitcases, because it had all seemed so much bigger than that, like something that couldn’t be contained. But it was, and it was bittersweet.
After I had finished packing, I went downstairs to the boys’ apartment and watched Ben pack. Sitting on his bed, under his cowboy sheets, and watching his slightly unorthodox technique, I realized how much I would miss him. There are three people from this group [you know who you are- Merzouga forever!] who I will miss so much. Ben has been half dad, half best friend to me on this trip. He watches out for me in every situation- making sure I don’t pay too much while shopping, watching to be certain I don’t get lost in a crowd at a festival, holding me back from crossing the street when he doesn’t deem it safe; it’s so funny and adorable. I will miss that. [Ben, I will also miss being able to say, “Yeah, I’ve heard that one already”, every time you begin a story. Get some new ones before I see you again!]
Then, Ben, Imad, Issam, Jared, Patrick, Michael, and I went to the medina for a huge free concert in the Jawla series in front of the Bab Mansour. It was ridiculously crowded; you could barely move! But it was so much fun! It was such a great ending to our Moroccan adventure. I spent all night dancing and laughing. It was a crazy scene though: people being thrown in the air, amateur cheerleading stunts three and four people tall going up all over the audience, people whipping their shirts around their heads, and wild dancing. At one point, a group of Moroccan men surrounded me and Michael and began dancing. Standing in the middle of that wild circle, I was a little nervous, but finally I just went with it and danced like mad. By the time we found our way out of the crowd, I was sweaty and exhausted and disgusting, but thoroughly happy. It was a beautiful end to our stay in Meknes.
At 1am, the bus came to pick us up. All of our Moroccan friends were there to say goodbye, and that was hard, but I was holding up pretty well. But then, when I went to hug Moha [he had decided not to come to Casa with us] for the millionth time, I felt something wet on my neck and realized that he was sobbing. That’s when I lost it. Watching Moha cry broke my heart. He has been so wonderful and I will miss him so much.
There were only nine of us on the bus, and four out of those nine were crying. It was all really sad, but eventually, one by one, we fell asleep. We arrived in Casablanca at 4:30am and dragged our stuff upstairs, and laid down in the exact spot where we spent five hours waiting the day that we arrived in Morocco. There I was, sitting in the same place I had only two months earlier, but I felt like a completely different person. It was a strange sensation, being back there again, but so different. Addison, Michael and I curled up and fell asleep, and I was out until 9am. Lauren and Megan left, and soon, it was Addison, Julia and my time to leave. Alexa, Michael, and Ben took the shuttle over to Terminal 3 with us, where we all said tearful goodbyes. It was hard saying goodbye to Alexa, even harder saying goodbye to Ben [he’s no good at goodbyes-that was the hard part!], and hardest of all saying goodbye to Michael. He and I stood there hugging and crying for a few minutes, and then suddenly, the three of them were gone.
Crying, the three of us going to New York went to check in. There was a considerable amount of drama then, with Royal Air Maroc saying that there were no seats left of the plane for Julia. We waited at the check-in counter trying to sort things out until 15 minutes before our plane was supposed to leave. When she was finally handed her boarding pass, we made a mad dash through Customs, security, and out onto the tarmac, barely making the plane. I think we’re something like halfway to New York now. I’m really tired, but I doubt I can sleep. I’m gonna make a quick little list, and then try to get some rest.
THINGS I WILL MISS ABOUT MOROCCO
-my ISA family
- khubz arabiyy
-Marackchiya, milfay, and labonny
- constant heckling from guys [let’s be honest, it’s an esteem booster]
-mint tea and fresh orange juice
-the music
-the Medina
-air conditioner pants
-call to prayer
THINGS I WON’T MISS ABOUT MOROCCO
-the heat
-three hour classes
-the little kids begging for spare change
-that smell you get a whiff of when the wind blows; you know the one
-explosive diarrhea [overshare? Nah]
-constant heckling from guys
THINGS I’M EXCITED ABOUT IN AMERICA
-rain
-Taco Bell
-Dr Pepper
-ice
-laying out by the pool
-wearing cute clothes
-my new house in Tuscaloosa!
More to come later…
Salaam wa hubb,
-Danielle
Marhaba b-Merzouga![
[or: Don’t Fight a Dung Beetle for Its Dinner]
[or: TIM- This is Merzouga]
[or: I don’t speak French!]
[or: These Days…]
I’m back from the Sahara! It was a long, exhausting weekend, but also one of the craziest and most exciting experiences of my life. I know I will never be able to do all the things that I saw and did justice with words, but I will try to give an excruciatingly detailed account of what happened as best I can. So here goes.
Thursday night Addison, Michael, Ben, and I set off for the bus station around 9:40PM. Upon arriving, I realized how nervous I was- getting on a bus to drive eight hours south of Meknes, to be picked up by someone we didn’t know, and do who knows what. Taban, the boys, being adventurous and manly and whatnot, weren’t nervous at all. My fears were eased somewhat when Moha showed up to wish us bon voyage and give us a few last minute pointers on the desert- he’s originally from a tribe in the Sahara. At 10:15, we said goodbye to Moha and got on the huge CMT bus. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was better than what we were expecting. Ben and I sat together, and Michael and Addison sat together. And so the trip began!
Ben and I talked for a few hours about random things in our lives, and after the bus stopped for dinner around 1am [and we got 20Dh orange juice- kadeem!], I persuaded him to cuddle and had one of the most comfortable dozes ever. The drive itself was gorgeous. We went through forests and valleys and up and down mountains and across gorges….not to mention the stars. Driving through remote parts of Morocco, you could see everything- stars exploding across the sky like I had never seen them before.
Finally, four stops and eight hours later, we pulled up to the bus station in Rissani. By the time Michael, Addison and I managed to get our stuff off the bus, Ben had already found Moha’s brother, Aissa [they look exactly alike], and we all climbed into his Land Rover for the 45-minute ride to Merzouga. I cannot tell you the feeling I got inside of me watching the giant sand dunes of the Sahara desert rise up in the distance as we got closer and closer to the village. I was in awe. Huge orange pyramids of sand rising up from behind tiny mud and straw houses- incredible.
Aissa brought us to an auberge [a scaled-down hotel, almost like a hostel but a little nicer] run by his friends Isabelle and Richad, Auberge Sable D’Or. It was a small five room house made out of straw and mud and thatch, with a huge courtyard, a goat pen, and an outdoor room with two wooden beds and a bamboo roof with mosquito netting. Isabelle gave us a room to put our things in and served us a light breakfast of eggs and khubz arabiyy, plus orange juice and café au lait. We had to fill out police forms saying how long we would be in Merzouga, etc, which I thought was hilarious, because the entire time we were there, I never saw a cop or anything semiofficial [we saw a “military base” in the middle of the desert that consisted of one rundown building with a Moroccan flag on the top…wouldn’t you hate to be stationed at Erg Chiba in Merzouga, holding down the fort and watching out for the Algerians?]. In fact, people smoke pot out in the open everywhere. No one tries to hide it at all! We took it easy for a little while, then Aissa loaded us back into the Land Rover, and we were off. We drove out into the sand dunes first, and they were bigger and more beautiful up close than I could have ever imagined. Then the funniest thing happened- a group of about ten boys, all no older than 10, surrounded us, sat down in the sand, and started pulling things out- jewelry, toy camels, plates- trying to sell them to us! It was so surreal, sitting in the sand in the middle of the desert, shopping! After that, Aissa took us a stone’s throw away to the oasis, where a canal of water runs through the desert and each family is allotted a square of land to grow food in. Then we took a short ride through the small market, and drove out to the dunes where they bury people in the sand to cure illnesses like diabetes. Aissa told us he hates the trend because people come in and “leave their sickness in the sand and their trash on the ground”.
Aissa took us back to the auberge when it started getting too hot outside, and we took a five-hour siesta, which was not so much a siesta as a big, uncomfortable, sweaty sometimes-sleep in the main room on the cushions that lined the walls. In the desert, you feel like you should be out doing things because you’re not there long, but it’s too hot to move, much less sightsee. It was even too hot to sleep. I felt like a rotisserie chicken; sleeping on my back until it got too sweaty, then flipping over…for five hours.
Finally, sometime after 5pm, Aissa suggested we go back out in the four-wheel-drive. He took us out to the border of Mauritania, which I wish we could have crossed. Aissa was driving like a madman over the dunes and we were having a great time bouncing around when suddenly the car came to an abrupt stop. Aissa gunned the engine and shifted gears for a few minutes before we all got out to check out the situation. The tires were nearly completely under the sand! It was really funny for me watching the boys push the Land Rover while Aissa dug the sand out from under the tires.
We went to the market for an hour where the boys and I cooled down with some much-needed Coca Cola, and we missed the sunset, which we were all really upset about. We got back to the auberge just in time [I’m definitely being sarcastic here] to wait two hours for dinner to be ready- after 11pm! It was couscous Friday, and we all ate under the stars- if you could call it eating. In fact, if you combined all the food we ate over the course of the weekend, it would probably add up to be less than two cups of food! After dinner was a really cool experience: Richad and some of his Berber friends got out their gnaoua instruments [gnaoua is a native type of music here; we’ve heard really weird stories about girls getting possessed by it and dancing hysterically for hours, so I was a little nervous at first] and played for us under the stars. It was to primal and tribal and raw and real and a million other things at once. I finally felt like I was in Africa, but there was something distinctively Arabic about it too. It was all very intoxicating and overwhelming. The other thing that took away from it was that everyone was passing around a joint as they were playing, and of course I was bothered by that, and a little nervous to be around it [yea yea, I’m a naïve little goody-goody- I don’t care!], but I guess to sing and play and be so carnal like they were, it was conceivable that they would be high. Soon we were all starting to fall asleep, so mattresses were put on the roof for us, and we all headed up to pass out…but the sight of the stars unobstructed by anything was so breathtaking that you couldn’t tear your eyes from them to go to sleep. Shooting stars were streaking across the sky every few seconds, and the Milky Way stretched across the heavens like a giant silver ribbon. I’ve never seen anything like it; the sky was so clear and bright and flawless; I know I will never forget the sight of it. Finally, we all cuddled up and slept until 8am the next morning.
I woke up sick, which was horrible. I felt dehydrated and hot and faint and like both ends of my body would explode at any moment. Unfortunately, this feeling would last all weekend and for two days once I got back to Meknes. A shower didn’t help much; neither did the few bites of “breakfast” [eggs and bread- I’m telling you, they don’t eat in the desert!] that I had. Also, my nose started bleeding, and hasn’t stopped yet! I’m starting to get a little worried; five days of continuous nosebleed? Hardly healthy!
Also, a brief sidenote that is probably an overshare [grandparents and other relatives, feel free to skip this part!]: your nose produces the gnarliest boogers ever in the desert. Like, really. Giant, rockhard, bloody, painful boogers. All of us spent the entire weekend excavating them. We call them doogers: desert boogers. They need their own name because they’re one of a kind- my nose will never be the same! Ok, I’m done; I apologize for being disgusting!
Moving on.
Autumn had arrived from Meknes early that morning, so around 11 we headed out to show her the dunes.
Aissa took us on a tour all the way around the dunes, which lasted for three hours. I don’t actually remember much of this, because the bouncing of the 4WD put me to sleep- I was so sick and my eyes were on fire [contacts wearers beware- the desert will dry contacts up in an hour flat! Your eyes will burn and be itchy the entire time!]. We made a stop at a Berber family’s house- a very small, very primitive mud house, where we were served tea. It was a million degrees outside, but somehow the interior rooms were cool! However, it still boggles my mind that people drink hot mint tea in the middle of the Sahara! After the second or third cup I was served over the weekend, I decided I couldn’t do it anymore, no matter how much I love it!
Aissa explained to us as we were driving around that a Touareg is anyone who travels around the desert, so technically the five of us were Touaregs. I’m sure this is just something tour guides tell dumb white people to give them a little desert thrill, and it worked. We were all pretty excited.
We arrived at a gnaoua village next. All of the people there practice gnaoua music, and little boys are sent from other villages to learn it there. We sat in a cool, shady room, and about a dozen men came in in traditional dress and played about six songs for us, which was amazing. The music really is enthralling- I can kind of understand why women are “possessed” by it. I suppose there is something tribal and ancient in us all that is so moved by that thunderous beat that our bodies just take on a life all their own despite us. After they finished, they invited us to learn how to play their instruments. I tried my hand at the bongos, but sadly, I wasn’t blessed with the gift of rhythm. Michael and I tried to master the Berber castinets, but they’re large and bulky and take a lot of finger coordination to use, so it was a disaster. Autumn was really good at the different types of drums, and so was Ben. Then, one of the men decided he wanted us to dance, and pulled us all up to form a circle where we all took turns in the middle, imitating how we was dancing, but eventually giving up and doing our own thing. The whole experience was really fun and enlightening, and I really felt like a part of it the entire time, as opposed to just feeling like an observer in my own experience [you’d be surprised how often I feel like that here, especially on tours and things of that nature]. I also saw the cutest little African girl ever- I wanted to pull a Madonna and take her back home with me.
We got back to the auberge with less than an hour to spare before our Berber camping adventure. We all packed up a few small bags, and went outside, where there was a camel train waiting for us. Finally! I told my mom before I came that I wouldn’t come home until I had ridden a camel, and for a while I was afraid it wouldn’t happen. A few other tourists joined us – four Italians and a French man and his daughter who had been staying in the auberge with us: Jean Claude and his daughter who we affectionately [or not] called Kelly Osbourne. Jean Claude was nice enough; he was just very French. By this, I mean he wore jean shorts and shirts that were too tight for him in various shades of black, and had dyed his hair black when it obviously should have been gray, and spoke to me in French constantly even though he knew I didn’t speak the language except for a few phrases I’ve picked up from Ben. Kelly Osbourne, on the other hand, rubbed me the wrong way from the beginning. Our first day at the auberge, she spent over seven hours straight on the computer. This infuriated me because, come on, you’re in the freaking Sahara desert! She also made a snide comment about my French accent, which was so stereotypically French of her, and bothered me, because I don’t pretend to speak French, and I definitely don’t pretend to be good at the few words I do speak. Did I mention this girl is only fifteen and a half? I figure if you’re young enough to still be counting half-years, you’re too young to be snarky to an adult [Dios mio, I just called myself an adult- scary!] like that. Our impressions of these two divided the group somewhat over the weekend. Ben, of course, loved them, because he speaks French and could communicate with them. Michael, Autumn and I banded together in our dislike for them and became Team Danielle. Addison was somewhere in the middle as a type of Switzerland. The debate rages on even now. But more on those two in a minute.
We got onto our camels; mine was of typical-camel color and composition; I affectionately called him Phillip. Later, our Berber guides would tell us his name was Blondie, and he became Phillip Blondie Jamel [the Arabic word for camel], or PBJ for short. Getting onto a camel is an experience in itself. They get up very slowly, straightening one joint at a time, so you’re jolted violently forward as their front legs begin to unfold, and stay there, coming dangerously close to falling face-first into the sand, until they stretch out their back legs. The ride is bumpy and uncomfortable, but hey, you’re riding a camel, you can’t really complain. So we started our two hour trek through the desert to our campsite, which was largely uneventful, or at least as uneventful as riding a camel through the Sahara desert at dusk can possibly be. At one point, Jean Claude whips out his cell phone to make a call- in the middle of the Sahara desert. Michael took one look at him, looked at me, and simply said, “Team Danielle”. It was the icing on the cake. Oh, you silly Frenchman!
I did, however, sing the Alabama fight song. I’m pretty sure I’m the first person ever en la historia del mundo to sing Yea Alabama on the back of a camel in the middle of the Sahara. It was a pretty cool feelings.
We stopped for a few minutes to watch the sun sink down behind the dunes, and Michael, Ben, and I seized the opportunity to make sand angels. Then we loaded ourselves back onto the camels to finish the journey to the tents. It was pretty dark by time we got to the two small bivouacs situating between two big dunes, so the five of us laid down in the sand and watched the stars come out. We did this for a few hours, and attempted to make small talk with the Italians [in their limited English] while Ben chatted up Jean Claude. Finally, around 11:30, it was time for dinner, which, as usual, was small and unfulfilling…stupid desert food. Everyone got their mattresses to go to sleep afterwards, and we found a little spot behind one of the tents in the hopes that it would block some of the sand from blowing on us [no such luck; it’s the desert, for pete’s sake!]. After laying down for a few minutes, Autumn, Ben, and I decide to make it a truly unforgettable experience and go streaking. As soon as we decide that yes, it’s time to do it, and no, we don’t care if people aren’t asleep, it’s too dark for them to see anything anyway, Ben pops up and begins running around the sand like a crazy man, doing flips and somersaults and just generally acting crazy. In the dark, all we could see was the white outline of shorts- I thought he was still wearing his boxers, and was furious that he was cheating!
“Ben, you have to be naked to go streaking!” I yell.
“I am naked!” was the reply. “Touch my butt!”
I didn’t believe him; I could clearly see white boxers. At this point, he launches himself onto me and all I feel is…nakedness. It was at this exact moment that I realized the white boxers I was seeing was his tanline from Asilah, and he was, in fact, naked…and on me. So Autumn and I jump up, strip down, and take off through the dunes, laughing and yelling and being silly. It really was one of the most freeing, liberating feelings ever- the warm Sahara air rushing against my body, and the sand both warm and cold at once beneath my feet. After we were out of breath [running in the sand is hard work!], we ran over to where we had dumped our clothes to find…that Ben had stolen them! I ran back to the mattresses and dove beneath one.
“Oh my God, she’s naked.” Michael says in the darkness.
“Ben, give me back my clothes!” I yell.
Finally, after some cajoling, he throws our clothes at us..but my underwear are missing. So I make him go out into the dunes and find them.
We fell asleep shortly thereafter, and Ben failed to wake me up to watch the sunrise, although he claims otherwise. I remain unconvinced.
My wakeup was eventful, though. Around 6:45, I felt something tickling my face. I thought it was Ben, because he had woken me up the morning before by tickling my face. When it didn’t stop after a few seconds, I blearily opened my eyes to find…a camel. Right above me. Really?! Who can say they’ve been woken up by a curious camel in the Sahara desert?! Ohebu al-Maghreb!
We cleaned up a little bit [brushing your teeth without water –at this point we had run out- is not a pleasant experience by any stretch of the imagination] and got back on the camels for the two hour ride back to Merzouga. I was feeling sick, but trying to be tough and stick it out. The Sahara was a humbling experience for me. I was trying to push my body to the limit and take it to a place it had never been physically, but it just wouldn’t go to where I was trying to push it. It was like I had hit a wall, and no matter how hard I tried to spur myself on, my body wouldn’t cooperate. No Danielle, it kept saying, I’ve reached my limit. I was a little surprised and very humbled, not to mention a little embarrassed to be the only one who got sick. At one point, I had to ask Ben to ask the Berbers to stop my camel so I could get off and lay in the sand, because I thought I was going to vomit. On the way down, my body felt so weak that my grip on the saddle loosened and I almost went flying off the camel. I didn’t even care; I was too sick.
The auberge was a welcome sight. I got off my camel and went inside without even telling our guides goodbye. I sprawled out on the cushions in the main room and tried to will my nausea away. Breakfast didn’t help much, and a shower was frustrating at best. After three days of not washing my hair and washing my body with antibacterial hand soap, I felt sick, dirty, and hairy. Finally, Aissa drove us to Rissani to begin the last leg of our trip. He gave us a tour of the medina there, which was like any other medina: busy, bustling, chaotic, with acrid smells and too much noise and all kinds of activity that I usually find interesting but on Sunday found overwhelming and exhausting. I think we were all worn out from the travel, lack of sleep, little food, and hot weather. Despite the fact that the five of us there get along the best out of the entire ISA group, we were all snapping at each other and being very irritable. I know I must have been hard to deal with, what with the being sick and all, even though I tried to be as little of an inconvenience as possible with the state that I was in. After the souq, we saw a really interesting animal market, which, regrettably, I didn’t appreciate fully while we were there because I was preoccupied with making sure I didn’t puke. There was a big, open room filled with goats that were being literally thrown and stuffed into carts, bleating and yelling something awful. Another room had dozens of cows in it, tied up and mooing. Finally, a big open field adjacent to a huge pen contained hundreds and hundreds of donkeys- mating, standing, pooping, making noise, being loaded down with bags…it was a PETA person’s nightmare, but really interesting to see.
Eventually I couldn’t handle the activity anymore, and Addison, Michael and I went to a café to lay down while Autumn and Ben went shopping. Autumn bought me a really pretty green caftan shirt since I couldn’t go, and it was much appreciated. We were all starving, to Aissa took us to his house where we were served Moroccan pizza. Everyone was really impressed with it, but it was definitely not to my liking. There was some spice akin to cinnamon in it that I felt really weird about…but oh well. After lunch, we went to the basement of Aissa’s shop across the street where it was shady and cool and took the world’s most amazing nap on the floor…on mats like kindergarteners. It was funny, but so necessary, because we were all dying!
We woke up at 6pm, and our bus was leaving at 8, but Ben insisted we do the Circuit touristique, an hour and a half ride around Rissani to see the 300-odd casbahs and countryside. We went, and it was interesting and the scenery was beautiful, but I was starting to get nervous around 7:45 when Aissa was still talking and we weren’t at the bus station yet. Finally I told Ben we absolutely had to go. Aissa got us to the station, we paid him, and very nearly missed the bus.
The ride was long and miserable and uncomfortable; mostly, I think, because we were all very ready to be home and go to sleep and get back to urinating, sweating, and pooping normally [or as much as you can in Morocco in general]. Finally, at 4am we arrived back in Meknes sweet Meknes and made the walk home from the bus station, exhausted but exhilarated at the weekend we had just had. We were sweaty, tired, my hair was tangled beyond belief, I was sick, my uterus hurt, and everyone was slightly grouchy, but we still laughed and joked the whole way home.
It has taken me three days to write all of this down because I would get so frustrated at how words simply could not do the experience justice. In that time, Autumn unfortunately had to leave Morocco early due to a death in the family, and today we took our final exams in Arabic and Religion. Tonight, Michael and I spent some quality time [four hours!] together in the medina doing some last minute shopping. It is hard for me to comprehend that in a few days, all of this will be a memory. Sitting at a café in the medina tonight, Michael and I talked about how strange it was looking around at the chaos around the Bab Mansour and knowing in a few days it would all be gone, a world away. These last few days here are terrifying- I am constantly worrying that I will forget the way things feel, smell, taste, look…my senses are drowning in so many feelings that I’m afraid it will all just wash over me and leave me forever. It’s horrifying, the idea of forgetting this new life I’ve forged for myself in Morocco. I know my life back home will not be the same, and I know I can never come back to this life here, exactly as it is now. Nothing will be the same after this, but I’m also afraid things will be too much the same- like none of it ever happened. It’s a strange, surreal feeling, and a strange, surreal fear.
That’s it for me tonight, I’m exhausted. More tomorrow after my last day ever at Jahmiya Moulay Ismail. Goodnight.
PS- Michael and Jennifer voted me Most Attractive on this trip. Score one for under-made-up, conservatively dressed Danielle!!!
“This guy is the most annoying motherf----r I’ve ever met!”-Michael Castellano
“I should not have licked that.”-Addison Vawters
“Don’t fight a dung beetle for its dinner.”-Mr. Becker, by way of Ben
“Hello, I am Abdul, nice to meet me.”-shop owner
Salaam wa hubb,
-Danielle
[or: TIM- This is Merzouga]
[or: I don’t speak French!]
[or: These Days…]
I’m back from the Sahara! It was a long, exhausting weekend, but also one of the craziest and most exciting experiences of my life. I know I will never be able to do all the things that I saw and did justice with words, but I will try to give an excruciatingly detailed account of what happened as best I can. So here goes.
Thursday night Addison, Michael, Ben, and I set off for the bus station around 9:40PM. Upon arriving, I realized how nervous I was- getting on a bus to drive eight hours south of Meknes, to be picked up by someone we didn’t know, and do who knows what. Taban, the boys, being adventurous and manly and whatnot, weren’t nervous at all. My fears were eased somewhat when Moha showed up to wish us bon voyage and give us a few last minute pointers on the desert- he’s originally from a tribe in the Sahara. At 10:15, we said goodbye to Moha and got on the huge CMT bus. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was better than what we were expecting. Ben and I sat together, and Michael and Addison sat together. And so the trip began!
Ben and I talked for a few hours about random things in our lives, and after the bus stopped for dinner around 1am [and we got 20Dh orange juice- kadeem!], I persuaded him to cuddle and had one of the most comfortable dozes ever. The drive itself was gorgeous. We went through forests and valleys and up and down mountains and across gorges….not to mention the stars. Driving through remote parts of Morocco, you could see everything- stars exploding across the sky like I had never seen them before.
Finally, four stops and eight hours later, we pulled up to the bus station in Rissani. By the time Michael, Addison and I managed to get our stuff off the bus, Ben had already found Moha’s brother, Aissa [they look exactly alike], and we all climbed into his Land Rover for the 45-minute ride to Merzouga. I cannot tell you the feeling I got inside of me watching the giant sand dunes of the Sahara desert rise up in the distance as we got closer and closer to the village. I was in awe. Huge orange pyramids of sand rising up from behind tiny mud and straw houses- incredible.
Aissa brought us to an auberge [a scaled-down hotel, almost like a hostel but a little nicer] run by his friends Isabelle and Richad, Auberge Sable D’Or. It was a small five room house made out of straw and mud and thatch, with a huge courtyard, a goat pen, and an outdoor room with two wooden beds and a bamboo roof with mosquito netting. Isabelle gave us a room to put our things in and served us a light breakfast of eggs and khubz arabiyy, plus orange juice and café au lait. We had to fill out police forms saying how long we would be in Merzouga, etc, which I thought was hilarious, because the entire time we were there, I never saw a cop or anything semiofficial [we saw a “military base” in the middle of the desert that consisted of one rundown building with a Moroccan flag on the top…wouldn’t you hate to be stationed at Erg Chiba in Merzouga, holding down the fort and watching out for the Algerians?]. In fact, people smoke pot out in the open everywhere. No one tries to hide it at all! We took it easy for a little while, then Aissa loaded us back into the Land Rover, and we were off. We drove out into the sand dunes first, and they were bigger and more beautiful up close than I could have ever imagined. Then the funniest thing happened- a group of about ten boys, all no older than 10, surrounded us, sat down in the sand, and started pulling things out- jewelry, toy camels, plates- trying to sell them to us! It was so surreal, sitting in the sand in the middle of the desert, shopping! After that, Aissa took us a stone’s throw away to the oasis, where a canal of water runs through the desert and each family is allotted a square of land to grow food in. Then we took a short ride through the small market, and drove out to the dunes where they bury people in the sand to cure illnesses like diabetes. Aissa told us he hates the trend because people come in and “leave their sickness in the sand and their trash on the ground”.
Aissa took us back to the auberge when it started getting too hot outside, and we took a five-hour siesta, which was not so much a siesta as a big, uncomfortable, sweaty sometimes-sleep in the main room on the cushions that lined the walls. In the desert, you feel like you should be out doing things because you’re not there long, but it’s too hot to move, much less sightsee. It was even too hot to sleep. I felt like a rotisserie chicken; sleeping on my back until it got too sweaty, then flipping over…for five hours.
Finally, sometime after 5pm, Aissa suggested we go back out in the four-wheel-drive. He took us out to the border of Mauritania, which I wish we could have crossed. Aissa was driving like a madman over the dunes and we were having a great time bouncing around when suddenly the car came to an abrupt stop. Aissa gunned the engine and shifted gears for a few minutes before we all got out to check out the situation. The tires were nearly completely under the sand! It was really funny for me watching the boys push the Land Rover while Aissa dug the sand out from under the tires.
We went to the market for an hour where the boys and I cooled down with some much-needed Coca Cola, and we missed the sunset, which we were all really upset about. We got back to the auberge just in time [I’m definitely being sarcastic here] to wait two hours for dinner to be ready- after 11pm! It was couscous Friday, and we all ate under the stars- if you could call it eating. In fact, if you combined all the food we ate over the course of the weekend, it would probably add up to be less than two cups of food! After dinner was a really cool experience: Richad and some of his Berber friends got out their gnaoua instruments [gnaoua is a native type of music here; we’ve heard really weird stories about girls getting possessed by it and dancing hysterically for hours, so I was a little nervous at first] and played for us under the stars. It was to primal and tribal and raw and real and a million other things at once. I finally felt like I was in Africa, but there was something distinctively Arabic about it too. It was all very intoxicating and overwhelming. The other thing that took away from it was that everyone was passing around a joint as they were playing, and of course I was bothered by that, and a little nervous to be around it [yea yea, I’m a naïve little goody-goody- I don’t care!], but I guess to sing and play and be so carnal like they were, it was conceivable that they would be high. Soon we were all starting to fall asleep, so mattresses were put on the roof for us, and we all headed up to pass out…but the sight of the stars unobstructed by anything was so breathtaking that you couldn’t tear your eyes from them to go to sleep. Shooting stars were streaking across the sky every few seconds, and the Milky Way stretched across the heavens like a giant silver ribbon. I’ve never seen anything like it; the sky was so clear and bright and flawless; I know I will never forget the sight of it. Finally, we all cuddled up and slept until 8am the next morning.
I woke up sick, which was horrible. I felt dehydrated and hot and faint and like both ends of my body would explode at any moment. Unfortunately, this feeling would last all weekend and for two days once I got back to Meknes. A shower didn’t help much; neither did the few bites of “breakfast” [eggs and bread- I’m telling you, they don’t eat in the desert!] that I had. Also, my nose started bleeding, and hasn’t stopped yet! I’m starting to get a little worried; five days of continuous nosebleed? Hardly healthy!
Also, a brief sidenote that is probably an overshare [grandparents and other relatives, feel free to skip this part!]: your nose produces the gnarliest boogers ever in the desert. Like, really. Giant, rockhard, bloody, painful boogers. All of us spent the entire weekend excavating them. We call them doogers: desert boogers. They need their own name because they’re one of a kind- my nose will never be the same! Ok, I’m done; I apologize for being disgusting!
Moving on.
Autumn had arrived from Meknes early that morning, so around 11 we headed out to show her the dunes.
Aissa took us on a tour all the way around the dunes, which lasted for three hours. I don’t actually remember much of this, because the bouncing of the 4WD put me to sleep- I was so sick and my eyes were on fire [contacts wearers beware- the desert will dry contacts up in an hour flat! Your eyes will burn and be itchy the entire time!]. We made a stop at a Berber family’s house- a very small, very primitive mud house, where we were served tea. It was a million degrees outside, but somehow the interior rooms were cool! However, it still boggles my mind that people drink hot mint tea in the middle of the Sahara! After the second or third cup I was served over the weekend, I decided I couldn’t do it anymore, no matter how much I love it!
Aissa explained to us as we were driving around that a Touareg is anyone who travels around the desert, so technically the five of us were Touaregs. I’m sure this is just something tour guides tell dumb white people to give them a little desert thrill, and it worked. We were all pretty excited.
We arrived at a gnaoua village next. All of the people there practice gnaoua music, and little boys are sent from other villages to learn it there. We sat in a cool, shady room, and about a dozen men came in in traditional dress and played about six songs for us, which was amazing. The music really is enthralling- I can kind of understand why women are “possessed” by it. I suppose there is something tribal and ancient in us all that is so moved by that thunderous beat that our bodies just take on a life all their own despite us. After they finished, they invited us to learn how to play their instruments. I tried my hand at the bongos, but sadly, I wasn’t blessed with the gift of rhythm. Michael and I tried to master the Berber castinets, but they’re large and bulky and take a lot of finger coordination to use, so it was a disaster. Autumn was really good at the different types of drums, and so was Ben. Then, one of the men decided he wanted us to dance, and pulled us all up to form a circle where we all took turns in the middle, imitating how we was dancing, but eventually giving up and doing our own thing. The whole experience was really fun and enlightening, and I really felt like a part of it the entire time, as opposed to just feeling like an observer in my own experience [you’d be surprised how often I feel like that here, especially on tours and things of that nature]. I also saw the cutest little African girl ever- I wanted to pull a Madonna and take her back home with me.
We got back to the auberge with less than an hour to spare before our Berber camping adventure. We all packed up a few small bags, and went outside, where there was a camel train waiting for us. Finally! I told my mom before I came that I wouldn’t come home until I had ridden a camel, and for a while I was afraid it wouldn’t happen. A few other tourists joined us – four Italians and a French man and his daughter who had been staying in the auberge with us: Jean Claude and his daughter who we affectionately [or not] called Kelly Osbourne. Jean Claude was nice enough; he was just very French. By this, I mean he wore jean shorts and shirts that were too tight for him in various shades of black, and had dyed his hair black when it obviously should have been gray, and spoke to me in French constantly even though he knew I didn’t speak the language except for a few phrases I’ve picked up from Ben. Kelly Osbourne, on the other hand, rubbed me the wrong way from the beginning. Our first day at the auberge, she spent over seven hours straight on the computer. This infuriated me because, come on, you’re in the freaking Sahara desert! She also made a snide comment about my French accent, which was so stereotypically French of her, and bothered me, because I don’t pretend to speak French, and I definitely don’t pretend to be good at the few words I do speak. Did I mention this girl is only fifteen and a half? I figure if you’re young enough to still be counting half-years, you’re too young to be snarky to an adult [Dios mio, I just called myself an adult- scary!] like that. Our impressions of these two divided the group somewhat over the weekend. Ben, of course, loved them, because he speaks French and could communicate with them. Michael, Autumn and I banded together in our dislike for them and became Team Danielle. Addison was somewhere in the middle as a type of Switzerland. The debate rages on even now. But more on those two in a minute.
We got onto our camels; mine was of typical-camel color and composition; I affectionately called him Phillip. Later, our Berber guides would tell us his name was Blondie, and he became Phillip Blondie Jamel [the Arabic word for camel], or PBJ for short. Getting onto a camel is an experience in itself. They get up very slowly, straightening one joint at a time, so you’re jolted violently forward as their front legs begin to unfold, and stay there, coming dangerously close to falling face-first into the sand, until they stretch out their back legs. The ride is bumpy and uncomfortable, but hey, you’re riding a camel, you can’t really complain. So we started our two hour trek through the desert to our campsite, which was largely uneventful, or at least as uneventful as riding a camel through the Sahara desert at dusk can possibly be. At one point, Jean Claude whips out his cell phone to make a call- in the middle of the Sahara desert. Michael took one look at him, looked at me, and simply said, “Team Danielle”. It was the icing on the cake. Oh, you silly Frenchman!
I did, however, sing the Alabama fight song. I’m pretty sure I’m the first person ever en la historia del mundo to sing Yea Alabama on the back of a camel in the middle of the Sahara. It was a pretty cool feelings.
We stopped for a few minutes to watch the sun sink down behind the dunes, and Michael, Ben, and I seized the opportunity to make sand angels. Then we loaded ourselves back onto the camels to finish the journey to the tents. It was pretty dark by time we got to the two small bivouacs situating between two big dunes, so the five of us laid down in the sand and watched the stars come out. We did this for a few hours, and attempted to make small talk with the Italians [in their limited English] while Ben chatted up Jean Claude. Finally, around 11:30, it was time for dinner, which, as usual, was small and unfulfilling…stupid desert food. Everyone got their mattresses to go to sleep afterwards, and we found a little spot behind one of the tents in the hopes that it would block some of the sand from blowing on us [no such luck; it’s the desert, for pete’s sake!]. After laying down for a few minutes, Autumn, Ben, and I decide to make it a truly unforgettable experience and go streaking. As soon as we decide that yes, it’s time to do it, and no, we don’t care if people aren’t asleep, it’s too dark for them to see anything anyway, Ben pops up and begins running around the sand like a crazy man, doing flips and somersaults and just generally acting crazy. In the dark, all we could see was the white outline of shorts- I thought he was still wearing his boxers, and was furious that he was cheating!
“Ben, you have to be naked to go streaking!” I yell.
“I am naked!” was the reply. “Touch my butt!”
I didn’t believe him; I could clearly see white boxers. At this point, he launches himself onto me and all I feel is…nakedness. It was at this exact moment that I realized the white boxers I was seeing was his tanline from Asilah, and he was, in fact, naked…and on me. So Autumn and I jump up, strip down, and take off through the dunes, laughing and yelling and being silly. It really was one of the most freeing, liberating feelings ever- the warm Sahara air rushing against my body, and the sand both warm and cold at once beneath my feet. After we were out of breath [running in the sand is hard work!], we ran over to where we had dumped our clothes to find…that Ben had stolen them! I ran back to the mattresses and dove beneath one.
“Oh my God, she’s naked.” Michael says in the darkness.
“Ben, give me back my clothes!” I yell.
Finally, after some cajoling, he throws our clothes at us..but my underwear are missing. So I make him go out into the dunes and find them.
We fell asleep shortly thereafter, and Ben failed to wake me up to watch the sunrise, although he claims otherwise. I remain unconvinced.
My wakeup was eventful, though. Around 6:45, I felt something tickling my face. I thought it was Ben, because he had woken me up the morning before by tickling my face. When it didn’t stop after a few seconds, I blearily opened my eyes to find…a camel. Right above me. Really?! Who can say they’ve been woken up by a curious camel in the Sahara desert?! Ohebu al-Maghreb!
We cleaned up a little bit [brushing your teeth without water –at this point we had run out- is not a pleasant experience by any stretch of the imagination] and got back on the camels for the two hour ride back to Merzouga. I was feeling sick, but trying to be tough and stick it out. The Sahara was a humbling experience for me. I was trying to push my body to the limit and take it to a place it had never been physically, but it just wouldn’t go to where I was trying to push it. It was like I had hit a wall, and no matter how hard I tried to spur myself on, my body wouldn’t cooperate. No Danielle, it kept saying, I’ve reached my limit. I was a little surprised and very humbled, not to mention a little embarrassed to be the only one who got sick. At one point, I had to ask Ben to ask the Berbers to stop my camel so I could get off and lay in the sand, because I thought I was going to vomit. On the way down, my body felt so weak that my grip on the saddle loosened and I almost went flying off the camel. I didn’t even care; I was too sick.
The auberge was a welcome sight. I got off my camel and went inside without even telling our guides goodbye. I sprawled out on the cushions in the main room and tried to will my nausea away. Breakfast didn’t help much, and a shower was frustrating at best. After three days of not washing my hair and washing my body with antibacterial hand soap, I felt sick, dirty, and hairy. Finally, Aissa drove us to Rissani to begin the last leg of our trip. He gave us a tour of the medina there, which was like any other medina: busy, bustling, chaotic, with acrid smells and too much noise and all kinds of activity that I usually find interesting but on Sunday found overwhelming and exhausting. I think we were all worn out from the travel, lack of sleep, little food, and hot weather. Despite the fact that the five of us there get along the best out of the entire ISA group, we were all snapping at each other and being very irritable. I know I must have been hard to deal with, what with the being sick and all, even though I tried to be as little of an inconvenience as possible with the state that I was in. After the souq, we saw a really interesting animal market, which, regrettably, I didn’t appreciate fully while we were there because I was preoccupied with making sure I didn’t puke. There was a big, open room filled with goats that were being literally thrown and stuffed into carts, bleating and yelling something awful. Another room had dozens of cows in it, tied up and mooing. Finally, a big open field adjacent to a huge pen contained hundreds and hundreds of donkeys- mating, standing, pooping, making noise, being loaded down with bags…it was a PETA person’s nightmare, but really interesting to see.
Eventually I couldn’t handle the activity anymore, and Addison, Michael and I went to a café to lay down while Autumn and Ben went shopping. Autumn bought me a really pretty green caftan shirt since I couldn’t go, and it was much appreciated. We were all starving, to Aissa took us to his house where we were served Moroccan pizza. Everyone was really impressed with it, but it was definitely not to my liking. There was some spice akin to cinnamon in it that I felt really weird about…but oh well. After lunch, we went to the basement of Aissa’s shop across the street where it was shady and cool and took the world’s most amazing nap on the floor…on mats like kindergarteners. It was funny, but so necessary, because we were all dying!
We woke up at 6pm, and our bus was leaving at 8, but Ben insisted we do the Circuit touristique, an hour and a half ride around Rissani to see the 300-odd casbahs and countryside. We went, and it was interesting and the scenery was beautiful, but I was starting to get nervous around 7:45 when Aissa was still talking and we weren’t at the bus station yet. Finally I told Ben we absolutely had to go. Aissa got us to the station, we paid him, and very nearly missed the bus.
The ride was long and miserable and uncomfortable; mostly, I think, because we were all very ready to be home and go to sleep and get back to urinating, sweating, and pooping normally [or as much as you can in Morocco in general]. Finally, at 4am we arrived back in Meknes sweet Meknes and made the walk home from the bus station, exhausted but exhilarated at the weekend we had just had. We were sweaty, tired, my hair was tangled beyond belief, I was sick, my uterus hurt, and everyone was slightly grouchy, but we still laughed and joked the whole way home.
It has taken me three days to write all of this down because I would get so frustrated at how words simply could not do the experience justice. In that time, Autumn unfortunately had to leave Morocco early due to a death in the family, and today we took our final exams in Arabic and Religion. Tonight, Michael and I spent some quality time [four hours!] together in the medina doing some last minute shopping. It is hard for me to comprehend that in a few days, all of this will be a memory. Sitting at a café in the medina tonight, Michael and I talked about how strange it was looking around at the chaos around the Bab Mansour and knowing in a few days it would all be gone, a world away. These last few days here are terrifying- I am constantly worrying that I will forget the way things feel, smell, taste, look…my senses are drowning in so many feelings that I’m afraid it will all just wash over me and leave me forever. It’s horrifying, the idea of forgetting this new life I’ve forged for myself in Morocco. I know my life back home will not be the same, and I know I can never come back to this life here, exactly as it is now. Nothing will be the same after this, but I’m also afraid things will be too much the same- like none of it ever happened. It’s a strange, surreal feeling, and a strange, surreal fear.
That’s it for me tonight, I’m exhausted. More tomorrow after my last day ever at Jahmiya Moulay Ismail. Goodnight.
PS- Michael and Jennifer voted me Most Attractive on this trip. Score one for under-made-up, conservatively dressed Danielle!!!
“This guy is the most annoying motherf----r I’ve ever met!”-Michael Castellano
“I should not have licked that.”-Addison Vawters
“Don’t fight a dung beetle for its dinner.”-Mr. Becker, by way of Ben
“Hello, I am Abdul, nice to meet me.”-shop owner
Salaam wa hubb,
-Danielle
...
Happy Belated Feast of the Throne Day!
It’s been a pretty chill week- I won’t bore you with the details. Class Monday, went to the medina that night. Arabic test Tuesday, went to the medina that night, then to the park.
Yesterday is when it got interesting. It was Feast of the Throne Day, a holiday in Morocco celebrating with King Mohammed VI ascended to power in 1999, so we didn’t have any class. All the ISA kids decided that a holiday with the word “Feast” in the name definitely called for a big American style banquet. So we made several trips to Label Vie and a local fruit market [and stopped on the way to get “The World’s Best Shawarma”], and started cooking around 2pm yesterday afternoon. Addison and I made my dad’s famous salsa, which was really difficult and took a long time because we couldn’t find a blender- so we chopped everything by hand into really fine little pieces. Michael made the world’s most delicious fruit salad- it included pineapple and cactus. Alexa made mashed potatoes, Lauren and Julia spent all day grilling chicken, Brigid made the world’s most delicious pudding, and Megan contributed baked beans. We invited our Arabic professors, Driss [the Beginning Arabic prof] and Zacharyae [my Intermediate professor], and they brought tons of beer and wine [who says Muslims don’t drink?]. Then Moha, Daniel, and three of Daniel’s friends showed up. Alexa and Brigid’s Moroccan boyfriends, Moiseen and Ilyas, came later, along with the boys’ Moroccan friends, Imad, Azziz, and Issam. We all ate until we were stuffed, and then the real fun began. First, Ben, Michael, Addison and I had to run to the bus station downtown to get our tickets for tonight, and along the way, Ben was “in rare form”. He was acting absolutely ridiculous, and I laughed so hard I thought I would die. After we got back, Ben and I teamed up to make the world’s most amazing Beer Pong team. At the end of the night, we were undefeated. Throughout the course of the party, we played Moha, Driss, and Zacharyae. I cannot even begin to explain how funny it was for me to realize I was in my apartment in Morocco, playing beer pong against my Arabic teacher. By 11pm, both of our instructors were completely wasted, and out of control. But the party kept going until 1am! All I have to say is, what a night!
Tonight at 10PM the boys and I leave for the Sahara! I’m so excited! So I won’t be writing again until Monday- expect a long one!
“Listen…..uhhhh….uhhhhh….uhhh….okay. You understand?” – Zacharyae
Zacharyae: Listen….uhhh….when you use yooreed…always with “an” or “anna”…ok? You understand?
Julia: What? No.
Me: Mudarra mansoob!!!
[Mudarra mansoob is a grammatical structure in Arabic]
Salaam wa hubb,
-Danielle
It’s been a pretty chill week- I won’t bore you with the details. Class Monday, went to the medina that night. Arabic test Tuesday, went to the medina that night, then to the park.
Yesterday is when it got interesting. It was Feast of the Throne Day, a holiday in Morocco celebrating with King Mohammed VI ascended to power in 1999, so we didn’t have any class. All the ISA kids decided that a holiday with the word “Feast” in the name definitely called for a big American style banquet. So we made several trips to Label Vie and a local fruit market [and stopped on the way to get “The World’s Best Shawarma”], and started cooking around 2pm yesterday afternoon. Addison and I made my dad’s famous salsa, which was really difficult and took a long time because we couldn’t find a blender- so we chopped everything by hand into really fine little pieces. Michael made the world’s most delicious fruit salad- it included pineapple and cactus. Alexa made mashed potatoes, Lauren and Julia spent all day grilling chicken, Brigid made the world’s most delicious pudding, and Megan contributed baked beans. We invited our Arabic professors, Driss [the Beginning Arabic prof] and Zacharyae [my Intermediate professor], and they brought tons of beer and wine [who says Muslims don’t drink?]. Then Moha, Daniel, and three of Daniel’s friends showed up. Alexa and Brigid’s Moroccan boyfriends, Moiseen and Ilyas, came later, along with the boys’ Moroccan friends, Imad, Azziz, and Issam. We all ate until we were stuffed, and then the real fun began. First, Ben, Michael, Addison and I had to run to the bus station downtown to get our tickets for tonight, and along the way, Ben was “in rare form”. He was acting absolutely ridiculous, and I laughed so hard I thought I would die. After we got back, Ben and I teamed up to make the world’s most amazing Beer Pong team. At the end of the night, we were undefeated. Throughout the course of the party, we played Moha, Driss, and Zacharyae. I cannot even begin to explain how funny it was for me to realize I was in my apartment in Morocco, playing beer pong against my Arabic teacher. By 11pm, both of our instructors were completely wasted, and out of control. But the party kept going until 1am! All I have to say is, what a night!
Tonight at 10PM the boys and I leave for the Sahara! I’m so excited! So I won’t be writing again until Monday- expect a long one!
“Listen…..uhhhh….uhhhhh….uhhh….okay. You understand?” – Zacharyae
Zacharyae: Listen….uhhh….when you use yooreed…always with “an” or “anna”…ok? You understand?
Julia: What? No.
Me: Mudarra mansoob!!!
[Mudarra mansoob is a grammatical structure in Arabic]
Salaam wa hubb,
-Danielle
...
What an incredible weekend it’s been!!!
I almost don’t even know where to start, so I guess I’ll begin with Thursday night. Ben, Lauren, Julia, Imad, Addison, Jared and I went to the medina to find something fun to do, as always. We wandered for a little bit, and Ben and I ate a fried fish. And by that I mean it was an entire fish, fresh out of the market, that was fried. We pulled it apart, ripped out the spine, and ate it whole! It was delicious! Ben even ate the head, because apparently it’s good luck, although I think it was just an excuse for him to be gross. Then we went to a café in the plaz by the Bab Mansour and had the most delicious omelette Panini ever. They absolutely love their omlettes here, at any time of day, and I’m totally ok with that.
Friday morning we woke up early and got on the bus to come to Asilah. It was a four hour bus ride but so incredibly worth it. As soon as we got to Asilah we went to Hotel Zelis, where we stayed. I was in a room with Lauren and Julia on the fifth floor. We got on the elevator, and it only went to the 4th floor. We were a little confused but took a spiral staircase up from the 4th floor and ended up….on the roof. Overlooking the ocean. It was absolutely breathtaking. There was a little veranda and behind it was our room. We definitely got the best room out of everyone. We freaked out and enjoyed the view for a few minutes before changing into our bathing suits and setting out to look for food. We roamed around the town, and let me tell you, Asilah is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. It’s perfect. After I retire, mark my words, I will move to Asilah and spend the rest of my life on the beach. There’s such a mix of culture and language…it’s unlike any other town I’ve ever been in. We ended up finding a wonderful little restaurant called Mataam Manar where I ate absolutely delicious swordfish- I had forgotten how much I missed eating fish! Because Meknes isn’t on the coast, we never get to eat it there. After that, we went to the beach and met up with the rest of the kids and alid out and played I n the breathtaking blue water. A typical Moroccan stalker told me I was Arab-colored, so that made my day. Eventually, Ben, Michael and I wandered over to a big wall of rocks that were shaped like huge jacks [like, bigger than a car] that had been carefully and strategically stacked. We happened upon a group of boys cooking tajine down in the rocks who gave us free temporary tattoos. We were feeling silly, so we each got one. Ben’s was definitely my favorite- a huge butterfly stretching across his chest. Michael picked out a heart with a banner across it that said Fun Lover for me, and I picked an octopus out for him. When our “new friends” started doing some sketchy stuff that I didn’t think it wise to be around in Morocco, I had Ben walk me back to the others. On the way, we were walking along this twenty foot high wall, and a man stopped Ben and warned him in French that his girlfriend [me] would get eaten by the shark-fish because I was showing too much skin in my bikini. Oh, Morocco. Ten seconds later, a big group of boys walked past us, and one of them jiggled my boob!!! Really. He reached out and JIGGLED MY BOOB, while making a ksss ksss kssss sound. I was in shock, and all I could do was yell “BEN!”, who promptly turned around and cursed at the guy in French.
That night, we all met at 7:30 to walk through the medina and watch the sunset. There’s some kind of art festival going on and there are people everywhere throughout the medina painting murals on walls and it was beautiful. We climbed down from the street onto some rocks jutting into the water and watched the sunset as little boys jumped from buildings in the medina into the water. It was beautiful. Unfortunately the horizon was a little foggy so we couldn’t see the green flash. Que lastima!
Later, Ben, Addison, Jared and I went on a walk along the beach, and the stars were so bright and so awe-inspiring. The Big Dipper literally jumped out of the sky. It was right over the water and so big and bright – I haven’t seen stars look like that in a long time.
Saturday was one of the best days I’ve ever had. Lauren, Julia and I woke up early and went back to Mataam Manar for omelettes. After that, we went shopping in the medina and I finally started doing some damage in Morocco. Up until yesterday, all I had really indulged in here was a Berber rug. Yesterday, I bought an orange caftan, a silver Berber ring that I am obsessed with, an antique silver hamsa bangle bracelet, hammered silver hamsa earrings, a yellow leather wallet embossed with a camel, and my favorite- an one of a kind original design dress from a local fashion designer that is wildly patterned and covered in intricate beading. It set me back nearly 600Dh but it is my new favorite piece of clothing. Afterwards, we ate shawarma and went back to the hotel, where the manager ordered a donkey cart to take us to Paradise Beach. One of the boys from the last ISA group here, Gabriel, told us that we absolutely had to go to Paradise Beach in a donkey cart, and now I could almost kiss him. It was the most bizarre, incredible, beautiful, scary thing ever. We climbed onto a small rolling table strapped to the back of this huge animal, and the ride was ridiculously bumpy and we were constantly in danger of flying right off. As an added surprise, the donkey pulling us started farting the second we started moving and continued a good portion of the way there. As we made our way through the medina, two guys in a Mercedes started following us and pulling up beside the cart to talk to us, and beg us to “go to the sea” with them. They even got on the phone to call their friends, and a few seconds later, we’re surrounded by three Mercedes Benzes! After following us for a good ten minutes, they finally gave up. We were only expecting a short ride, but 30 minutes later we were rolling down a dirt road, through watermelon fields and past shacks, and starting to get slightly nervous. We had no clue where we were, except that we were somewhere right outside of Asilah, with no cell phone service. But then, we drove in between two hills and the horizon opened up, and we were on a huge cliff towering above the ocean. It put the beaches in Cozumel and Hawaii to shame. Beautiful clear water, no one on the beach, and huts serving food and drinks. We spent nearly three blissful hours laying out and playing in the water. A few minutes before we were supposed to catch our cart back to Asilah, the three of us were lying down when we heard a sound like a donkey dying. We started looking around, and upon sitting up, found that four camels had appeared in front of us, like a mirage. We were so excited!!! We took pictures with them and petted them. There was even a baby who was very affectionate and nuzzling up against me. It was incredible! We took a slightly less eventful ride back to the hotel, and bid adieu to our smelly cart. The rest of the day wasn’t nearly as exciting. Everyone got together for dinner, wandered around the medina,and we took a disappointed trip to Hotel Alkhaim to go dancing [it didn’t work out].
Today we woke up early and went to Tangier for the day and seriously…nothing exciting happened. At all. Except we could see Spain. And Patrick puked the whole way home. That’s it.
I had a great weekend; I hope yall did too! Now it’s time to buckle down and study for my Arabic test on Tuesday and nag Ben until he finishes hammering out the details of our free weekend!
Salaam wa hubb,
-Danielle
I almost don’t even know where to start, so I guess I’ll begin with Thursday night. Ben, Lauren, Julia, Imad, Addison, Jared and I went to the medina to find something fun to do, as always. We wandered for a little bit, and Ben and I ate a fried fish. And by that I mean it was an entire fish, fresh out of the market, that was fried. We pulled it apart, ripped out the spine, and ate it whole! It was delicious! Ben even ate the head, because apparently it’s good luck, although I think it was just an excuse for him to be gross. Then we went to a café in the plaz by the Bab Mansour and had the most delicious omelette Panini ever. They absolutely love their omlettes here, at any time of day, and I’m totally ok with that.
Friday morning we woke up early and got on the bus to come to Asilah. It was a four hour bus ride but so incredibly worth it. As soon as we got to Asilah we went to Hotel Zelis, where we stayed. I was in a room with Lauren and Julia on the fifth floor. We got on the elevator, and it only went to the 4th floor. We were a little confused but took a spiral staircase up from the 4th floor and ended up….on the roof. Overlooking the ocean. It was absolutely breathtaking. There was a little veranda and behind it was our room. We definitely got the best room out of everyone. We freaked out and enjoyed the view for a few minutes before changing into our bathing suits and setting out to look for food. We roamed around the town, and let me tell you, Asilah is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. It’s perfect. After I retire, mark my words, I will move to Asilah and spend the rest of my life on the beach. There’s such a mix of culture and language…it’s unlike any other town I’ve ever been in. We ended up finding a wonderful little restaurant called Mataam Manar where I ate absolutely delicious swordfish- I had forgotten how much I missed eating fish! Because Meknes isn’t on the coast, we never get to eat it there. After that, we went to the beach and met up with the rest of the kids and alid out and played I n the breathtaking blue water. A typical Moroccan stalker told me I was Arab-colored, so that made my day. Eventually, Ben, Michael and I wandered over to a big wall of rocks that were shaped like huge jacks [like, bigger than a car] that had been carefully and strategically stacked. We happened upon a group of boys cooking tajine down in the rocks who gave us free temporary tattoos. We were feeling silly, so we each got one. Ben’s was definitely my favorite- a huge butterfly stretching across his chest. Michael picked out a heart with a banner across it that said Fun Lover for me, and I picked an octopus out for him. When our “new friends” started doing some sketchy stuff that I didn’t think it wise to be around in Morocco, I had Ben walk me back to the others. On the way, we were walking along this twenty foot high wall, and a man stopped Ben and warned him in French that his girlfriend [me] would get eaten by the shark-fish because I was showing too much skin in my bikini. Oh, Morocco. Ten seconds later, a big group of boys walked past us, and one of them jiggled my boob!!! Really. He reached out and JIGGLED MY BOOB, while making a ksss ksss kssss sound. I was in shock, and all I could do was yell “BEN!”, who promptly turned around and cursed at the guy in French.
That night, we all met at 7:30 to walk through the medina and watch the sunset. There’s some kind of art festival going on and there are people everywhere throughout the medina painting murals on walls and it was beautiful. We climbed down from the street onto some rocks jutting into the water and watched the sunset as little boys jumped from buildings in the medina into the water. It was beautiful. Unfortunately the horizon was a little foggy so we couldn’t see the green flash. Que lastima!
Later, Ben, Addison, Jared and I went on a walk along the beach, and the stars were so bright and so awe-inspiring. The Big Dipper literally jumped out of the sky. It was right over the water and so big and bright – I haven’t seen stars look like that in a long time.
Saturday was one of the best days I’ve ever had. Lauren, Julia and I woke up early and went back to Mataam Manar for omelettes. After that, we went shopping in the medina and I finally started doing some damage in Morocco. Up until yesterday, all I had really indulged in here was a Berber rug. Yesterday, I bought an orange caftan, a silver Berber ring that I am obsessed with, an antique silver hamsa bangle bracelet, hammered silver hamsa earrings, a yellow leather wallet embossed with a camel, and my favorite- an one of a kind original design dress from a local fashion designer that is wildly patterned and covered in intricate beading. It set me back nearly 600Dh but it is my new favorite piece of clothing. Afterwards, we ate shawarma and went back to the hotel, where the manager ordered a donkey cart to take us to Paradise Beach. One of the boys from the last ISA group here, Gabriel, told us that we absolutely had to go to Paradise Beach in a donkey cart, and now I could almost kiss him. It was the most bizarre, incredible, beautiful, scary thing ever. We climbed onto a small rolling table strapped to the back of this huge animal, and the ride was ridiculously bumpy and we were constantly in danger of flying right off. As an added surprise, the donkey pulling us started farting the second we started moving and continued a good portion of the way there. As we made our way through the medina, two guys in a Mercedes started following us and pulling up beside the cart to talk to us, and beg us to “go to the sea” with them. They even got on the phone to call their friends, and a few seconds later, we’re surrounded by three Mercedes Benzes! After following us for a good ten minutes, they finally gave up. We were only expecting a short ride, but 30 minutes later we were rolling down a dirt road, through watermelon fields and past shacks, and starting to get slightly nervous. We had no clue where we were, except that we were somewhere right outside of Asilah, with no cell phone service. But then, we drove in between two hills and the horizon opened up, and we were on a huge cliff towering above the ocean. It put the beaches in Cozumel and Hawaii to shame. Beautiful clear water, no one on the beach, and huts serving food and drinks. We spent nearly three blissful hours laying out and playing in the water. A few minutes before we were supposed to catch our cart back to Asilah, the three of us were lying down when we heard a sound like a donkey dying. We started looking around, and upon sitting up, found that four camels had appeared in front of us, like a mirage. We were so excited!!! We took pictures with them and petted them. There was even a baby who was very affectionate and nuzzling up against me. It was incredible! We took a slightly less eventful ride back to the hotel, and bid adieu to our smelly cart. The rest of the day wasn’t nearly as exciting. Everyone got together for dinner, wandered around the medina,and we took a disappointed trip to Hotel Alkhaim to go dancing [it didn’t work out].
Today we woke up early and went to Tangier for the day and seriously…nothing exciting happened. At all. Except we could see Spain. And Patrick puked the whole way home. That’s it.
I had a great weekend; I hope yall did too! Now it’s time to buckle down and study for my Arabic test on Tuesday and nag Ben until he finishes hammering out the details of our free weekend!
Salaam wa hubb,
-Danielle
...
Last night, Imad, Lauren, Julia, Jared and I went to the medina to see a concert at the old zoo. It was an old hippie band, and we liked it, but were all dying of thirst, so we went to la plaz at the Bab Mansour to get drinks. After that, Jared, Imad and I wandered around, seeing tons of Imad’s friends along the way, and picking people up here and there. It was such a Moroccan experience; someone would call out to him from across the street and come up and start talking in Arabic, Spanish, English, and French all mixed together. It was so uniquely bizarre and so humorous, and it was one of the times when I just felt so happy to be here. The feeling faded a little when my gnarly, down-ass Moroccan friend Imad [or at least that’s what I thought he was] starting hitting on me and asking me to be his girlfriend. Isn’t that how it always is when boys and girls are friends? Que lastima.
Today, the feeling was completely gone for most of the day. I was tired, and stressed, and anxious all for no reason. It was an overwhelming feeling and I couldn’t explain it. We went to belly dancing class, but at 10:30 our teacher still hadn’t shown up [class is at 10…she usually runs on “Moroccan time” and is around 15 minutes late, but 30 was just too much for us] so we left. Then we laid around until class at 4…totally unmotivated and lazy, although I will admit it was nice to have a relaxed kind of day, because we haven’t had any of those thus far in Morocco- we’re constantly moving a million miles an hour! Then we went to class and the most amazing thing happened to turn my day around; one of those things you always dream about happening in college, but that never seems to. After our break at 5:30, our teacher let us go early! An hour and a half early! Alhamdullelah! I think he could tell that we are all tired and a little sick and just burnt out in general, and that we were leaving for Asilah tomorrow and needed to rest. That lifted my spirits considerably, and now I’m pumped for the beach tomorrow! Three days of surf, sand, and sun in Morocco? I definitely need it! I’d say the weekend is off to a good start; I’ll keep you posted!
Have a nehiyat isbooah moomtaz!
Salaam wa hubb,
-Danielle
PS- Another reason why I love Morocco: Julia and Megan just waged war against Alexa and I in a date fight. There are dates all over the apartment and we’ll be finding them for weeks. Alexa got pegged in the face and now has the outline of a date on her eye. I LOVE MOROCCO!
Oh, and to update the flesh wound file..my entire right big toe is purple. How? No clue. I trip a lot.
And my tragus is infected.
That is all.
Today, the feeling was completely gone for most of the day. I was tired, and stressed, and anxious all for no reason. It was an overwhelming feeling and I couldn’t explain it. We went to belly dancing class, but at 10:30 our teacher still hadn’t shown up [class is at 10…she usually runs on “Moroccan time” and is around 15 minutes late, but 30 was just too much for us] so we left. Then we laid around until class at 4…totally unmotivated and lazy, although I will admit it was nice to have a relaxed kind of day, because we haven’t had any of those thus far in Morocco- we’re constantly moving a million miles an hour! Then we went to class and the most amazing thing happened to turn my day around; one of those things you always dream about happening in college, but that never seems to. After our break at 5:30, our teacher let us go early! An hour and a half early! Alhamdullelah! I think he could tell that we are all tired and a little sick and just burnt out in general, and that we were leaving for Asilah tomorrow and needed to rest. That lifted my spirits considerably, and now I’m pumped for the beach tomorrow! Three days of surf, sand, and sun in Morocco? I definitely need it! I’d say the weekend is off to a good start; I’ll keep you posted!
Have a nehiyat isbooah moomtaz!
Salaam wa hubb,
-Danielle
PS- Another reason why I love Morocco: Julia and Megan just waged war against Alexa and I in a date fight. There are dates all over the apartment and we’ll be finding them for weeks. Alexa got pegged in the face and now has the outline of a date on her eye. I LOVE MOROCCO!
Oh, and to update the flesh wound file..my entire right big toe is purple. How? No clue. I trip a lot.
And my tragus is infected.
That is all.
...
Last night I had this wonderful experience that I just had to write about.
It was over 100 degrees even after the sun had gone down, and I went to bed around 1am, but sleep was impossible. Around 1:30, I stripped down and lay on the marble floor, thinking maybe it would be cooler there and I would finally be able to get some sleep. After an hour with no success, I climbed back into my bed, defeated. Seconds later, my phone rang. It was Charlie! I was ecstatic to talk to him, and we had a great [and expensive] conversation. Finally, nearly two hours later, we got off the phone and I was laying in bed, willing sleep to come. It was hot, sticky, and dead silent. Then, suddenly, at 4:45, the call to prayer began. Five times a day, the mosques in Muslim countries broadcast a call to prayer [half song, half poem- all beautiful] over loudspeakers that can be heard all over the city. I’m used to hearing them over the chaotic sounds of the city, and they seem so appropriate blending in with the cacophony of Meknes. Sometimes it astonishes me how normal we all think it is, because if something like that were to happen in America, people would be offended and appalled and shocked and a medley of other less-than-desirable feelings. But last night…everything was still and calm, and slowly out of the darkness came this floating, wailing call to prayer. Seconds later, two other mosques began their call to prayer. Then a few more came seeping in through the night. Eventually, there were about a dozen calls filling the night air, all bittersweet and sad and tumultuous, all different, but all blending together in this beautiful melody. I laid as still as possible, wishing it would never stop. I think it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. I wish you all could have heard it. I’ve never been so awestruck by something in my life. So even though I was cursing my lack of sleep this morning in class, I’m so grateful I was awake to hear it.
Before all that, I went to the medina with Lauren, Ben, and Imad for a local concert series. It was fun; Imad spent most of the night teaching us bad words in Arabic, which is always entertaining. After that, we wandered over to McDonalds for a midnight Daim McFlurry, where we met a bunch of Imad’s friends and BS-ed for a few hours. We finally made it home around 1am. It was all good fun, and I learned my new favorite word- layahum. It means whatever, and therefore I will be using it a lot.
That’s it for now- it’s time to post some entries since I just hacked onto the network! Thank you Emtil, whoever you are!
Salaam wa hubb,
-Danielle
It was over 100 degrees even after the sun had gone down, and I went to bed around 1am, but sleep was impossible. Around 1:30, I stripped down and lay on the marble floor, thinking maybe it would be cooler there and I would finally be able to get some sleep. After an hour with no success, I climbed back into my bed, defeated. Seconds later, my phone rang. It was Charlie! I was ecstatic to talk to him, and we had a great [and expensive] conversation. Finally, nearly two hours later, we got off the phone and I was laying in bed, willing sleep to come. It was hot, sticky, and dead silent. Then, suddenly, at 4:45, the call to prayer began. Five times a day, the mosques in Muslim countries broadcast a call to prayer [half song, half poem- all beautiful] over loudspeakers that can be heard all over the city. I’m used to hearing them over the chaotic sounds of the city, and they seem so appropriate blending in with the cacophony of Meknes. Sometimes it astonishes me how normal we all think it is, because if something like that were to happen in America, people would be offended and appalled and shocked and a medley of other less-than-desirable feelings. But last night…everything was still and calm, and slowly out of the darkness came this floating, wailing call to prayer. Seconds later, two other mosques began their call to prayer. Then a few more came seeping in through the night. Eventually, there were about a dozen calls filling the night air, all bittersweet and sad and tumultuous, all different, but all blending together in this beautiful melody. I laid as still as possible, wishing it would never stop. I think it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. I wish you all could have heard it. I’ve never been so awestruck by something in my life. So even though I was cursing my lack of sleep this morning in class, I’m so grateful I was awake to hear it.
Before all that, I went to the medina with Lauren, Ben, and Imad for a local concert series. It was fun; Imad spent most of the night teaching us bad words in Arabic, which is always entertaining. After that, we wandered over to McDonalds for a midnight Daim McFlurry, where we met a bunch of Imad’s friends and BS-ed for a few hours. We finally made it home around 1am. It was all good fun, and I learned my new favorite word- layahum. It means whatever, and therefore I will be using it a lot.
That’s it for now- it’s time to post some entries since I just hacked onto the network! Thank you Emtil, whoever you are!
Salaam wa hubb,
-Danielle
